Author's Preface to The Olyrian Saga;

Please be warned ahead of time, my writing, the stories that I tell, are not meant for everyone. As John Lydgate once said; "You can please some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but never all of the people all of the time."

My story may contain the following; Harem dynamics, Dominance and submission, master/slave dynamics, NTR, oral, vaginal, and anal sex, brat-taming, non-consent/reluctance, mind control (to a degree), Fantasy races, fantasy violence, My own homebrewed concept of magic, and a story arch that may make way for other MC's in other story lines in the same world setting.

If the way I convey these ideas intrigues and amuses you, keep reading.

If they do not, then I invite you to read other works on LitErotica. Find those who inspire your mind theatre and give them some well deserved love.

At the suggestion of TheDrow, I am adding this edit and expanding the lost two months of progression from 0.2: 'Days of Silent Dark' to 1. 'First Light' in the first 9 sub-chapters, describing the trials and discoveries Nazaqi makes on his way to the surface.

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0.1: Through Amber and Shadows.

I must have dozed off, because I woke up and I was sitting in one of those old Victorian arm chairs with a cup of coffee in my hands. The smell of old books, and wood polish tickled my senses as I became aware of someone watching me. Looking to my right, I saw a man in his late fifties, wearing a gray suit, but the cut of it was not quite correct. He had short white hair and a close cropped beard, a slender build and sparkling intelligent eyes, and a welcoming smile.

"Well," he said in a warm voice. "I suppose it is time that we had a talk."

"Uh.. sure." I said lamely, setting the cup and saucer on the side table to my right. "Can I ask you something though..?"

The man flipped his hand in a 'go ahead' gesture.

"Where.. Am I?"

"This?..." he looked around at the library, complete with a bay window and reading bench. "This.. is nothing more than a construct. A medium to facilitate our conversation, and to help you understand that you are not insane."

"Oh.. well, that's good." I replied and began to immediately doubt what he had said.

"Yes, it is. Now don't be difficult. I and the others have invested a bit too much for you to.. Lose your marbles.. I think the saying goes?"

I sighed and did my best to relax.

"Fine then..So, who are you?"

"I am.. Well, my name isn't terribly important, suffice to say that I am little more than a memory at this point."

"A memory?.. of who? I don't think I remember you."

The man shook his head. "What."

"I said a memory of who."

"A memory of what."

I realized I was getting nowhere, and then a skit of Abbot and Costello flashed through my head. "Oh.. funny." I said dryly.

"Thank you, I have always appreciated humor, and your memories are delightfully filled with little snippets of it." the man said leaning back in his own chair, manicured fingernails tapping at the armrest.

"So.. You said you and the 'others'.. What others?"

Smiling, he asked me. "You've been having some very lucid dreams recently, haven't you?"

"Uh.. yeeahh.." I drawled out slowly, remembering the dreams I had been having lately of being instructed in combat by one big fellow for years, and having another insist that I was learning magic all wrong and berating me for being a dense and hopeless pupil.

"Those men, like me, are little more than memories. Pale reflections of people who existed very long ago." he stated.

"Ahh, you mean like ghosts." I said, though maybe I wasn't quite understanding him.

He sighed, shaking his head. "I guess that description will do, if it helps us get to the point."

"Okay, and what is the point exactly?" I was catching on to his irritation with me, and something about him told me I really did not want to piss this fellow off.

"You have also been seeing something else, haven't you?" He said, prompting the memory of seeing a large room as if through thick amber, but noticing each time that my ability to see the room was getting easier, or maybe the amber was getting clearer.

"Yes.. So that was a dream too?" I asked.

He waggled his left hand. "That.. was a lot less of a dream than the rest." He sighed and shook his head, leaning forward and fixing his intense eyes on me while propping his elbows on his knees.

"You.. were dead." He stated flatly, and it was like a lightning bolt slammed into me.

I remembered laying in a hospital bed with monitors and machines attached to me. The sound of beeping machines and the hiss of a ventilator as one of the latest viruses ate away at my body. I was sixty-three years old. I had lived a decent life, but nothing to write a movie script about. I had been married, had a kid, moved around the country and learned a lot of things, done a lot of things and lived well enough to be content with it all. I had never been in the military, nor felt any driving desire to go kill or die for rich people I would never meet. But the explosion just outside of my hospital ward had kept me from dying in pain, I guess.

But.. was it an explosion? For some reason that didn't sound right to me, but then again, I couldn't remember what had actually happened.

"Are you back with me now?" Asked the man across from me.

I nodded, shaking off the memories and looking at him.

"Yes, You died there, but much happened to you between then and when you came to be here." He gestured dismissively. "None of that matters though. What does matter is that you.." he pointed at me casually.. ".. are being offered a new life, knowledge, and training that will help you in this world."

I blinked at that and realized that the knowledge and training that he was speaking of was also all of the 'lucid dreams' that he had spoken of earlier. And by the way he said 'this world', I wasn't going to be dropped back into Northern California in my 'new life'.. "Well shit." I thought.

"Ah... so, the pieces are coming together now. Good." he said, leaning back into the armchair again with a satisfied smile.

"Yeah,.. I would say so." I said, leaning back myself and rubbing at my face as I did my best to absorb it all. "So, tell me about this.. New world you are tossing me into."

The man chuckled like I had told him a joke. "But.. you already know."

I peeled my hands away from my face and looked at him curiously. "You mean.. The room behind the yellow glass?"

He sighed. "That was not glass, boy.. That was crystalized mana, a little something that was meant to be a trap for me." he shrugged. "And it worked well enough, but.. Never mind that. It also happened to be perfect for preserving your new body while you were studying under those masters of combat and the path of magic.

I grunted. "Alright then.. What about this knowledge you mentioned."

"Ah.." his smile turned into a bit of a grimace. "The knowledge part may be a bit out of date, as it were. But the basics are still sound."

I narrowed my eyes at him and made a circular gesture with my hand, coaxing him to continue.

"I had to filter out a great deal of.. Eh, shall we say detrimental material from the knowledge that you were being imbued with."

At my continued stare the old man shrugged and sighed. "The body that you inhabit was meant to be the future vessel of a litch, an undead mage of immense power.. And for very unpleasant purposes." he confessed. "His plan was to recreate the world in his image after contesting with my brethren who watch over this world."

"Your brethren?" I asked. "So.. you're a god."

"No. As I said from the beginning, I am little more than a memory. I.." he paused now, seeming a bit uncomfortable with what he was going to say next. "I, the being that I was.. broke the rules, and created a mortal body in order to directly interfere with the world. I aimed to disrupt or destroy the litch and prevent a war that would have.. Quite frankly, it would have destroyed the world we are in, and likely would have spread, like cancer, to other worlds and universes."

"A litch.." I breathed out.

"I confess an error, a mistake, a gaff.. And that is the one part you grasp onto?" laughed the man in the chair as we sat in a 'construct' and talked.

"Well,.. I mean.." I stammer out an excuse. "Those are supposed to be pretty nasty, aren't they?"

"Of course they are." he agreed. "But, at least the result of my sacrifice is that this one litch, and those like him, will never be allowed to access this universe again. Crisis averted, as your fictional heroes like to say."

"I guess so." I agreed. "Still, you haven't told me what this all has to do with..." I paused as the subject came back around to how I had gained 'out of date' knowledge, and I began to shake as the realization hit me, along with repeated visions of a black ink filtering through the amber towards me. He had done it time after time, year after year. Right up until the end.

"Shit."

"Ah.. there it is," he agreed. "He was attempting to pour into you, his consciousness, his ambitions, his knowledge of the world in which he had been born, and once again rise to power." He shook his head. "But I prevented it, kept it from gaining root in you." He smiled, though not in any way that was reassuring to me. "Elsewise I would have.. Well. No need to go into any of that, now. Is there?"

I just nodded.

"So. When I wake up from.." I gestured around us. "..this. Everything that I have been.. dreaming about is going to come crashing into me at once?" I asked, almost afraid of the answer.

"Hm? Oh.. no, no. That would be, decidedly unhelpful for you I think." he shook his head. "No, Instead it will simply be there, ready for you to use when you need it. Oh, The magic that you have learned will.. have to be grown into, I suppose you would say. Much like a child growing into his fathers boots. But the muscle memory should be quite firmly present and available to you from the moment you..ah, wake."

I sat for a minute thinking that over, and it made sense, really. From everything that I had learned, through crafting magic based on elements, runes and formulae, If I started out with the power that I would have had, I could as easily blow myself to chunks trying to do something simple.

"Yeah.. I think that's for the best." I agreed and we sat silently for a while, each of us pondering our own thoughts.

"Your name.." said the man who was a memory of a god.

"Um, is there something wrong with my name?" I asked, even as I was having a hard time remembering it at the moment, all things considered.

"I think it would be best if you took on a new name." He said gently.

"Is there a reason for that?" I questioned.

"Well.. yes and no. Let's just say.. Your old name isn't going to suit you anymore." he responded, though I was having a hard time believing him.

"Why? What's wrong with my name? Not that I can remember it at the moment.."

"Well, that is part of it right there." He held up his hand and shook his head. "No, I am not going to remind you of your old name. But I will suggest one, and it will have all the meaning that it needs to."

I stared at him in puzzlement, then just shrugged. "Fine. Suggest away."

The smile he gave me then was warm with a bit of laughter in his eyes. "Nazaqi." He nodded. "Nazaqi will suit you well, I think. And.. hm, Hayle for a surname."

"Nazaqi.. Hayle." I said it like I was tasting wine, rolling it over my tongue and finding that I liked the sound. "Nazaqi Hayle it is then."

We both sat there for a moment or two, in our own thoughts.

"So.." I said. "When is this.. 'waking up' thing going to happen, exactly?"

"Oh, any moment now," he said with a mischievous grin. "Brace yourself."

"Wha..?!?"

And then I was falling, and there was the sound of something like crystal shattering on stone.

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0.2: Days of Silent Dark

The sound of crystal and the sensation of falling.

This was how I awoke to the world I would experience in my second life. It wasn't a grand start, to be honest. I tried to bring my arms up to break my fall, but nothing was working as it should, and the only thing to break my fall was the heavy coating of dust that billowed up around me. I couldn't see it wafting through the air, nor could I see much of anything in the lightless cold of wherever I was. My impact had knocked the breath out of me, and as I lay there, I struggled to pull air back into my lungs, only to cough what little I gained back out again as the dust flowed in and clogged my mouth and throat.

I struggled feebly to roll myself onto my back, but only succeeded in twitching my left arm a little. I coughed again, and somehow managed to clear enough of the thick dust that I could breathe in some clear air. I didn't mean clean, because the air of the room was stagnant, cold and musty. It smelled of long rotted meat and decay. So with the ache of the impact on my cheek, knees and knuckles, I lay where I landed, coughing occasionally and taking stock. My arms and legs and, really, my whole body tingled. A person can manage when a leg falls asleep from lack of circulation, but when it is one's whole body, it is terribly uncomfortable to say the least.

As I lay there, breathing in and occasionally coughing again as more dust filtered into the area around my mouth, I thought back to talking to the nameless being that had thrown me into this world. I still had no idea what he wanted, what he was or why he had chosen me from the uncountable masses of possibilities. But, there I was; Lost, blind, bewildered, aching, cold, with my entire body tingling and only then beginning to feel my fingertips. That is when the pain set in, and it grew like I was on fire. From the fingertips of my left hand all the way up to my shoulder and then throughout my body until I regretted being able to feel anything at all. All I could do was groan, and endure until I could regain control of my limbs, and slowly turn myself over onto my back.

The change was minimal. Now instead of my face, chest, and the fronts of my thighs being cold.. Oh, and obviously the tender bits that least appreciate being cold.. Now, only my back was cold. I could feel whatever it was that I was laying on, and it felt cold, smooth and unforgiving. Without any ability to see, I could only guess that it was stone. I wanted to see, I wanted that very much at the moment. I thought, maybe it was because of that desire that I felt like I should already know how to see in the dark. So I closed my eyes, with an obvious lack of change in that regard, and thought back to the dreams that I had before I awoke.

"The Weaponsmaster.. And the Mage." I thought to myself. "One of them had to have had some experience in dealing with dark places."

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"Shouldn't I just cast a spell of light?" I had asked Maridu, as we sat opposite each other, watching the camp fire.

"Oh, certainly, my brainless student. One should always let one's enemies know precisely where a feeble bodied mage awaits their arrows and spells from the dark. You may as well simply yell out and bend over for them to have at ye while you are at it." Maridu was nothing if he wasn't sharp tongued and condescending. As far as I could tell, he had to breathe sarcasm in order to maintain his existence, even during these Socratic moments where he would actually talk to me, and try to impart some of his personal experience.

"Alright. So, not a light spell." I concluded.

"Oh, I didn't say that, now did I?" he shot back with a smirk.

"So.. what. Am I supposed to cast a light spell in my guts?" I challenged him sarcastically.

"Oh! Ha ha ha.. I would love to see that! No. But what aspects of magic have I shown you? Think, boy. I know you have some sort of mind in there. Use it!"

Of the seven aspects of magic that I had been shown; Earth could mold and shape anything made of or from the earth. Stone, steel or wood, it made no difference other than the density of the thing, and it took more effort on the part of the mage to make those changes the more dense the material was. But just like with the other six, a mage had to have a clear image of their intent before they began as well as the process, nearly on a cellular level. But Earth as a magic could not by itself produce light, It had to have fire to heat the earth enough to glow.

Earth was not the answer.

Fire magic could be used to destroy, but it could also preserve life. Fire could be shaped, but it was ephemeral, amorphic by its very nature. It could produce light, but it was a light that could be seen by one's enemies as well as one's self and friends.

Fire was not the answer.

Air magic could shape even stone if given enough time. It could cause water to freeze, but required fire magic to remove the heat from the surrounding air. Air could be condensed into fast rotating discs, or spheres of defense and even razor thin blades depending on the need. In combination with Water magic, air magic could produce lightning, but that was a dangerous proposition because lightning was unpredictable and hard to contain. Particularly if the mage was wearing any kind of iron, gold, silver or other conductive metals.

Air was not the answer.

Water magic could condense, or disperse water vapor in a small or large area. It could be used to form spheres, blades or even be made to give way to make a pocket of breathable air if needed. If the spell or enchantment were powerful enough water could even be summoned from the plane of elements, but that was more than a bit beyond me. Combined with fire magic it could produce steam, or ice if the heat was removed. Water magic on its own could not produce light. It could channel light, change it, diffuse it, reflect it..

But singularly and without air or fire, water simply wasn't the answer.

Mind magic was obviously of little use in the dark. Unless one could see their target, or have direct contact with it, mind magic would only be a detriment in dark caves or enclosed spaces where there may be unseen threats. One may as well shout one's presence and alert every living thing in the area that a creature capable of touching their mind was near. Mind magic could be used to listen in on the thoughts of others, sense their mood or disposition toward the caster or others and if the mage was strong enough they could influence others to varied degrees, but light was simply impossible.

Mind magic was not the answer.

Spirit magic.. It was a possibility. Calling out to the spirits of the earth, the forest, the dead or the living to bring forth light. Some spirits emitted light such as the freilings or sprites, the Fae-kin and those ghosts and wraiths that sometimes haunted places of turmoil and tragedy such as the old legend of Will-o-the-Whisp. But to call a wraith or a ghost only for the sake of light would be proving to Maridu that I was just as dumb as he thought I was. It would end up with me fighting against the cold undead creature and by extinguishing the spirit, I would extinguish the light it gave.

Spirit.. Was not the answer.

That left..

"Body magic." I said aloud.

"Oh! It does have a brain! Miracle of miracles!" Maridu exclaimed.

I sighed and glared at the skinny old mage with absolutely no effect.

After a long moment of pregnant silence, I gave in and asked. "Great, So how does a mage see without light?"

"Heh, Obviously they can't." the old man smirked. He was baiting me and I knew it, the cunning old shit. "But a mage can see mana, or at least any mage with skill, talent and knowledge can. Do you have those, boy?"

"So how does one 'see' mana?" I asked him, to which he clapped his hands gleefully.

"Well, that is definitely the question, isn't it, my dear dunce. But to answer your question, it is in everything. It is in the growth of the tallest mountain, the flow of every river, the raging of every storm and crash of every ocean wave. It is in the tallest spire.. And it is always in the spaces in between." he said while waving his right hand in the air, his eyes following behind and shining bright in the most honest expression I had ever seen from him; Absolute awe. But they were shining. They shone with a light of their own, and that was the clue that I had needed.

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"Body magic" I thought to myself again, and delved into myself. I dove into the memory, and the details of changing how one observed the world through flesh, blood and nerves. I shaped the image of what I had to do, and cemented the end result in my mind before calling on the mana that was within me, summoning forth only the slightest trickle to empower the magic. taking the time for precision, I formed the rune for 'Body'. Around this I drew the first ring of symbols, the ring which described the purpose of the spell; the changing of my own body in a minor but critically important way. Then with that image solidly in mind and linked to the rune, I drew the second ring describing the qualifiers of the spell. And finally, the outer layer describing time and duration. But for this I could neither apply the instantaneous formulae, nor the 'indeterminate' or 'indefinite' symbols, I had to power the spell with mana for only as long as it took to make the physical changes and no more. Firming the image in my mind after each step and checking again and again.

Slowly, so very carefully and slowly, I changed and adjusted a portion of the light receptive cells of my eyes, and the nerves, and eventually I began to see. At first it was only a spark, a flicker, and then a steady glow that expanded throughout my field of vision. I opened my eyes and far above me, the smooth shaped stone ceiling arched. It was a dome shaped ceiling of solid stone, shaped of a piece, leaving not even a hair fine gap or join. There was light!

The effort was not without a cost, and when I was done, I was exhausted. I gave myself over to sleep and awoke to a room unchanged. My ability to see magic had not expired. I do not know how long I had slept, but my body ached again from the cold of the stone and lack of movement. So, I rolled myself to one side, doing my best not to disturb the thick layer of dust that covered the stone floor, and looked around me. I pushed myself up to sit and turn my head, taking in the dust covered stone floor. My attention was caught by the remains of a crystal pillar from which I had fallen, large enough, and of a shape to hold a man. All around my feet were fragments of amber crystals of pure crystalized mana, but even as I watched they were fading, melting ever so slowly into the air around me like thin shards of ice, evaporating on a hot summer day and turning into mist. It had been my very own sarcophagus. But for how long had I been there? Only the gods knew.

Beyond and behind me lay shattered or overturned stone tables, pillars and glass bottles, urns of fine ceramic and mounds of dust that had some vague shape as though they had once been furnishings in some long forgotten age. Those things are the sight that greeted me.

Those.. And the bones and desiccated flesh of the beings who had died here. This room had been witness to a battle, and the walls were pitted in places, darkened by fire and fractured by stone, magic and steel. The destruction was centered around one area and half a dozen skeletons lay strewn about. Among the desiccated skeletons that littered the room, there was one that drew me in, there was something... familiar about it. To the right of the amber pillar, one single skeleton was pinned to the wall of the chamber by an odd S-shaped spear. Hanging in tattered patches of cloth, the ragged remains of a robe that had more singular threads than whole material which clung to the bones, draping over them like a parody of a burial shroud. Golden rings still clung to the bones of its fingers, a broad necklace dangled from its bent neck, and a golden chain hung from its hip bone still clinging to the tattered remains of the skeleton's robe.

I pushed myself to my feet slowly, doing my best not to disturb the dust that could erupt at any sudden move and clog my lungs once again. I took five, slow, careful steps toward the wall as I stared at it. Then I looked back at the others. One sat leaning against the far wall next to an archway that led out of the room. It wore armor of rusted steel and age tarnished brass trim. In its hand a long heavy sword lay in its limp grasp. A helmet lay nearby, dented and split. Another skeleton lay arched over a broken pillar of stone, half of it had been scorched into non-existence. Another lay face down, smaller than the rest, and bedecked with crumbling leather straps and clumps of rust that may have once been knives or daggers. The final two lay together their backs leaning against a broken stone table, arms wrapped around each other in death. Finally, I looked at the skeleton pinned to the wall again, wondering to myself "What happened here?", and like a floodgate had been blown from its hinges, a wave of disorientation and vertigo washed over me, knocking me to my knees, causing the dust to billow up around me again.

I noticed nothing of what was happening around me, all I could see were flashes of light. I could feel the vibrations of impact and the muted screams of fury, pain and rage, the cracking of stone as a body was thrown across the room by some terrible force. Movement resolved, though only vaguely, into the shapes of men and women engaging in battle against my captor. The lich casually waved its boney hand sending forth a cascading whirlwind of light and force that caught one hero and turned them into a screaming pillar of fire arching across the vault into a stone support, cracking it and causing it to fall to the floor. I felt the tremors even within my amber prison. I felt the radiant heat through my skin, muted and dimmed though it was, still I felt it.

Three figures still stood, moving and dodging, sprinting in and out to slash and harry the living bones. The smallest of the five split around to the side while the chain armored man held the lich's attention wielding a sword and shield, only long enough to take the brunt of a wind-blade spell that sent razor sharp arcs of condensed air all around him, the man's throat and belly erupted in sprays of red as he flew back, arching through the air to land with his back to an overturned stone table. Two screams of agonized grief pierced the amber of my prison. One came from the thief, running fast and climbing the wall through sheer speed and agility, she arched high, one curved wicked bladed dagger held back and swung down to ram it into the shoulder of the lich. She must have known it would do little but temporarily impede the undead creature's movements. Even as she was caught in its grasp and felt the sudden impact and agony of the lich piercing through her gut to her spine with sharp bone talons, she knew. She took one last breath and spat red contempt into the expressionless visage of the horror, then she was cast aside to land and roll limply across the floor to her place of final rest. She knew, but it was worth her life. She had bought her companion the time that she needed to move into position, and run forward, limping and bleeding, to drive her weapon into the lich, the curved blade passing between the ribs and shattering the dark stone that preserved the undead creature's life and piercing into the shaped stone of the wall behind it, pinning it there.

The last hero knew as well. They had all known. This was one last attempt to prevent the plague of death and destruction that would have ended everything they knew and loved. Called by their god, they answered and gave their everything. The shriek of rage, terror, and denial echoed through the room, and down every hallway and cavernous chamber that had been carved from the living mountain. That shriek was a blast that spun the last standing hero, sending her sprawling against the table at her male companion's side. The last breath of the lich king faded into nothing. The last hero crawled, bleeding out her life as she pulled herself up to lean into her companion, laying his arm over her shoulder and tucking herself into him. They had willingly given everything, they had sacrificed and lost everything.. But, they had won.

Vaguely, I felt a sense of satisfaction tinged with sadness.

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As the dizziness passed, I felt my stomach rebel and clench, I leaned forward, catching myself with my hands and vomited up bile onto the floor, adding to the collective stench of the room. I kept my eyes closed as I tried to breathe slowly and center myself. Then I wiped the drool and bile from my lips with the back of my right arm, leaning back and sitting on my heels as I opened my eyes and looked around the room again. This time, at least, there was no overwhelming sense of vertigo as memory, reality and dual perspective clashed. Just myself sitting in a stone chamber in the company of the long dead.

As I sat there absorbing the reality of my situation, I realized that I was losing time. But I calmed and centered myself, bringing my mind into order, recalling the practical hierarchy of needs. I needed food, water, shelter, clothing and, by all indications and the inherited memories of the denizens of this world, I needed some form of defense. Looking around me once again, I realized there was very little of any of that to be had. Little, but not nothing. With aching joints and muscles, I pushed myself to my feet once again and approached the lich's remains.

Among the ruin and wreckage of the chamber, little stood out to me. Foremost among those things was the S-shaped spear that had been driven into the lich. It had a shallow double curve composed half of a broad grip with tightly woven leather that seemed to be untouched by the time this place had endured. The other half was a long, single edged blade with a gentle curve reminiscent of a Japanese long sword. The whole thing looked, to me, like the child of a Katana and a Naginata.

The female hero had, in her desperation, driven it through a jagged lump of crystal with hooks and thorns spiking out from its mass. It was deep black and sickly to look upon, and now it was pressed to the back of the lich's ribs. The blade had been driven with enough force to pierce into the shaped stone of the chamber wall, leaving a long jagged crack up and down for several inches, but the force of the lich's final breath had loosened the swords hold on the wall, leaving it to sag with the weight of its burden.

My eyes, sensitized to the emanations of mana, viewed the spear and found that it glowed golden, even along the darkened length of the blade, with a light of its own. There was magic in this blade, though what kind it was, I could not define. I guessed that it was that magic which had protected it from corrosion and kept the dust from settling on its magnificent silvered black surface of the blade, or the curved brass cross guard, and leather wrapped grip. Almost without realizing it, I found my hands taking hold of the grip, my arms flexing slowly to pry the blade from the grasp of the stone wall. With a rasp and a metallic hiss of steel over stone, it slid free, bringing the darkened crystal with it.

The heart of the lich, the last physical manifestation of its essence had been shattered, dispelling its hold on this world and banishing it to the void that the lich had worshipped and sought to bring into this world. The skeleton, the last physical remains of the lich, disturbed from its age long position, rattled and broke free to clatter onto the ground in a circle, scattering the dust, and followed by the dull thunk of the black crystal landing in their midst, but otherwise falling silent and still. I spent a few moments admiring the naginata, and then moved to the closest of the heroes. The smallest one, a female thief of a size to be mistaken for a child. If she had been standing, the top of her head would have reached my lower ribs at best. Everything else about her would have been proportionate for an adult. I knew this much because I had watched her in her final, glorious moments. The crumbling leather and lumps of corroded steel that she had carried were of little use to me, still I knelt down and pressed a fingertip to the cheek bone of her skull and closed my eyes, giving thanks to her for her sacrifice.

There was nothing significant left upon her remains, so I pushed myself to my feet and approached the two who lay embraced and leaning against the table. Once again I knelt, touching each briefly and giving thanks, and asking their forgiveness for disturbing their remains. Beside the male, resting under a pile of dust was a softly glowing lump. Carefully, I brushed aside the dust and fragments covering the lump until the source of the glow was revealed. A silvery metal flask about the size of those I had once used for camping and hiking in my previous life. It was carved with runes and etched on one side with an image of a waterfall tumbling over rounded stones. I picked it up gently, shaking off the last of the dust and felt the contents slosh around inside. I was dubious about drinking the contents, obviously. After being left in this place for however long, any liquid must surely be foul. Still, if I could find a source of water, it would be good to have something to carry water with me as I explored and found my way out of this place. Then, as I was about to rise, I noticed the faint glow of mana beneath the smaller skeleton of the female. I reached carefully under her and felt around with the tips of my fingers, trying to disturb the heroes resting place as little as possible, I felt a cool solidity and a slight tingle of magic and took hold of it, pulling it from underneath the pile of bones, revealing a dagger still within its sheath. Taking hold of the grip and the sheath, I drew the slightly curved blade until it was free. Shaped much like a Tanto, it was the twin, in miniature of the sword-spear that lay at my side. I sheathed the dagger again, and bowed my head in respectful thanks to the dead heroes, then took the flask and weapons with me as I continued my search.

I pushed myself to my feet and moved to the next skeleton, the one that lay bent backward over the shattered pillar. Examining the skeleton slowly, I thought that it seemed somewhat misshapen. The fingers were shorter than those of the other skeletons, missing the last bones. The skull was shaped differently as well, its eye sockets larger, and the teeth had pronounced fangs both top and bottom. All together she must have only stood five feet tall at her straightest. It was when I looked at the remaining foot and the string of bones extending from the bottom of the spine that the collective structure of it fell into place. This had been a Felid female. A memory flickered through my mind that was not of my own, of half-human half-cat people. The Felid people of this world were fairly common in certain places. Once again I knelt, placing a finger on the skull of the Felid woman and gave my thanks for her sacrifice. Then I lifted up and moved to the last of the heroes' remains. This man must have stood taller than me by almost a foot. Large, thick heavy bones were covered in the rusting remains of his chain and leather armor. There was little left of anything he had carried, and so I knelt one last time and gave my thanks to him. Whether they knew it or not, they had preserved the world with their selfless gift.

Carrying the naginata and dagger in my left hand, and the flask in my right, and wearing nothing but the hair on my head, I left the chamber through the archway on the far side of the room. My departure was blocked by a door made of stone, and carved with figures expressing agony and despair. The whole thing was disturbing to me, but I had to examine the thing while ignoring the overall message that the artisan had wished to convey.

I set down the flask to bring my sense of touch into play as I searched for the means to open the door. Seven feet tall, and arched at the top, it was surrounded by a frame of mage-shaped stone embedded with crystals of a kind I could not immediately place. As I stared at one of the crystals, though, I felt a touch of vertigo as several memories seeped through into my consciousness. These were akin to mana crystals; they formed naturally deep in the earth, in places where mana gathered and pooled. These crystals attained the quality to retain, conduct or convert mana into other kinds of energy such as light, heat, or kinetic movement. Some of those were natural qualities of the crystal, like retention or conductivity, but the others of their kind required runic patterns to be etched or shaped into the crystals, which was a laborious and sometimes dangerous process if the shaper was not skilled.

The crystals embedded around the frame of the door were a mixture of all three types as well as some that had formed through other means that I did not immediately recognize. I struggled against another wave of vertigo as memories flickered in and out of my awareness, the lich's memories. He had created this door and many others like it, designed them, shaped them and embedded the crystals and had his living servants empower them with their own mana, and with that knowledge came the understanding of how the doors worked and that physical force would do little to open the path before me.

Reaching my right hand out, I placed my fingers to one of the earth crystals and let my mana flow into it, watching as a dim light sparked within it, a light that slowly brightened illuminating the area around the door and finally, with a light shower of accumulated stone dust, the door shifted and began sliding into the recessed pocket within the wall. Before me lay a long empty hallway, broken from time to time by doorways on both the left and right side. Dust, and stones lay in the path, and piled against the walls, signs of neglect and abandonment. I retrieved the flask and stepped out into the hall, lit only by the mana that coursed ever so slowly through the stone around me.

The doorways that I passed led into small rooms, closets and servants' chambers occupied by low stone beds, simple toilets and basins for water which had long since dried up or become clogged with accumulated stone dust. The hallway ended in a T-branch, leading both left and right. With nothing to distinguish or recommend either, I chose to turn left. It was, I realized, a memory of years of collaborative adventure story telling across the surface of a table strewn with papers, pencils, dice and painted figurines. The faces of the people across from and surrounding me were blurred in my mind, but the habits and the methods were still remembered, as was the laughter and the groans of disappointment, the shouts of victory and the frustrated growls of defeat.

Still more doorways, and arches broke the smooth expanse of stone walls to my left and right, but one constant was the still, heavy silence. I wondered how long it had been since any living thing had tread these paths, rested within these chambers, labored in these lightless hallways. I supposed, as I passed another empty room, that I would likely never know. For what felt like hours I wandered the empty passages, turning left at every branch until I discovered a dead end, or a large vaulted room meant for some unknown purpose. There was, in the end, nothing here. Yet there was also an uncanny familiarity to these halls. I could only ascribe it to the memories that I had inherited from the lich. His intimate knowledge of every detail of this place, every passage, hall, servants chamber and the shaped plumbing meant to convey fresh water and flush away waste lay in his mind and memories. But the thought of delving too deeply into them frightened me. Flashes of watching his memories flowing through the amber of the crystal like black ink dripping horizontally through water as it trickled toward me and seeped into my skin, caused me to shudder in revulsion. Each instance felt like the touch of cold, dead flesh on my skin, and left a residue of sticky illness in its wake. How could I dare to delve into that, endure that again? And yet, I knew that without those memories, I might be trapped in this place, just as I had behind the door to the chamber in which he had perished. I turned, and entered a servants' chamber. One among the many that contained a stone bed, toilet and trough. With no door to seal myself in, I worried that I might be vulnerable, but if anything else still lived, or moved within these halls I would surely have seen some trace of it.

I moved to the stone bed, laid the naginata and dagger on the platform, and turned to the trough. It was time to inspect the flask that I had been carrying in hopes of it being useful. Kneeling down over the trough, I turned the flask this way and that, examining it more closely. The carven image of the waterfall was framed by runes in very small print, and from the imparted memories of learning with the magician Maridu, I slowly began to grasp the structure of them and the purpose. The runes, in various forms and positions created a formula that gathered mana from its surroundings and empowered a water based spell, linking them both with fine lines to the image and to inlaid crystals of the same type that had been in the door, though obviously much, much smaller. I took hold of the metal stopper and gave it a tug, twisting it this way and that until it finally pulled free. I held my breath, just in case the contents turned out to be noxious, and turned the flask over to pour the liquid out, inspecting it closely.

What poured forth was a clear liquid that sparked a hope, and caused my parched mouth to ache in a need that had been pushed back and denied for the entire time I had been here. I finally took a breath through my nose and smelled nothing other than the dampened dust from within the basin. I poured a little into the palm of my left hand and brought it close to my nose, giving it the sniff test, and smelled nothing other than the scent of my own hand. Bracing myself, I stuck out my tongue and tasted it. Nothing immediately tasted wrong, and other than a mounting thirst I felt no particular effect. Still, I waited, giving myself enough time to be certain that it was indeed what it seemed to be; cold, clear, pure water. After a few minutes, and feeling no strangeness, I gave in and brought the flask to my lips, pouring a mouthful and groaning in relief as I swished it around my mouth, then spitting it and the dust that had clung to my teeth and tongue out into the basin before taking another mouthful.

Water. Cold, clear water. I had, at the very least a means to carry it, and even though there was some kind of enchantment on the flask, it would take time to parse out the exact type and the scope of it. Still, it did not seem to have any adverse effect on the contents, so I indulged my thirst with another mouthful before capping the flask and setting it next to my weapons. That was next on my list to examine, so I sat on the edge of the stone bed and laid the naginata across my lap, turning it one way and back again. I could feel mana within the weapon, both the grip and the blade. It was more than just the mana flowing along the length of it that I could see. The blade of the weapon felt cool, smooth and very sharp. Still, I sensed that there was some obscure quality to the whole of it. In the case of the flask, the power of the enchantment had held and preserved the flask and its contents over time, and I could sense the water based mana in the enchantment itself. The flask was a work of masterful craftsmanship. The naginata on the other hand was a step beyond that, yet I could not pin down the nature of the magic that I sensed within it. Turning it over, I held it in a way that I could look down the length of it. My left hand gripped near the pommel which had a slight, rounded hook to the brass cap, designed to catch the small finger and prevent the weapon from slipping from the user's grasp. The curve of the long grip also leant to providing additional curvature in a two handed cutting or chopping swing. I slid my hand up along the grip toward the hilts, feeling the smoothness of the leather against my fingers and palm and over the thicker section two hand-spans from the hilts of the weapon, and turned the weapon sideways to get a good look at the cross hilts. They were formed like an abbreviated S-shaped saber hilt, curving toward the knuckles below, and away from the wrist above, but only extended a few inches in either direction from the body of the weapon. It was fronted by a disk of a brassy colored metal in the shape of intertwining vines with outward pointing thorns.

I paused as something caught my attention, a small lever, hidden and disguised as a dulled thorn and positioned where it could be depressed by using your thumb. I pushed down on it and heard a slight click as the hilts and grip separated. Turning the grip slightly, I pulled them apart, I saw that the blade had another set of hilts within, these were smaller and more suitable to my hand than the larger circumference, and slid inside of the thicker section of the long grip. The whole piece separated and I held a wide-mouthed scabbard in one hand and a two handed sword in the other. I laughed a little in amazement and admiration for the design. The whole thing was one weapon in two distinct forms. Both a sword and a spear in one.

Separated from the scabbard-grip, the sword had a finely balanced mass designed for cutting and stabbing with a heavy brass, or bronze pommel designed to pommel strikes. I turned the blade over in my hand, and sheathed it. I saw no use having the blade exposed and likely to cut me as I explored.

Then it was time to deal with the last items of my inheritance. The memories. Those of Maridu were comfortable, and even though there was plenty of sarcasm and dissatisfaction in the crawling pace of my learning, there was also a comfortable warmth and respect that flavored them. The memories of the warrior, Dalgoran, were as silent and stoic in their place within my mind as the man himself. My memories of him were filled with him silently setting the example, showing instead of lecturing, but with the ever present thin cane with which he showed his disapproval of my form, stance or positioning. His style of teaching was not without conversation, or laughter, but those times were reserved for when I had grasped a concept and executed the moves to his satisfaction. Then, the warmth of his personality surfaced like the sun emerging from a shrouding mist.

In my time with both, neither had been inclined to speak of where they had come from, nor the people they had known. There was a feeling that I had, that reminding them of their lives would only bring dissonance to our relations and the purpose of their instruction. The being who had met with me had said that they, like himself, were only memories and echoes of the beings that they had been.

The memories that I hesitated to delve into, shied away from with revulsion and dread, were those of the lich. Yet, still they seeped into my awareness. Decades and centuries of study and experimentation into the arcane arts, endless days of crafting spell formulae and testing them, both on the living and the dead. He felt no empathy, sympathy or compassion for anything or anyone. Men, women, children, animals and all manner of beasts. They were nothing to him but the means to and end. The tools of discovering the details and the effects of spells, enchantments and weapons. Each was simply a means to an end; The true limit and nature of magic and the universe. He was not cruel for the sake of cruelty, but this hardly stopped him from using those helpless beings to further his advancement in discovering the true fabric of this universe. Much of this was obscured, of course. Hidden and blurred from the vision of my mind's eye, though I had no objection to that lack of knowing. Still, I knew enough.

I knew his purpose was to contest with the gods of this world, to displace them and himself become the sole origin and receptacle of power. I knew also that the path before him had been whispered to him by beings of absolute malevolence and malice toward the kinds of worlds in which he existed. They slipped into his mind from across the veil between worlds and whispered the path toward immortality, and he walked it gleefully.

I knew also, the threat that was posed if he were discovered too soon, and the steps that he took to seclude himself. Those efforts had yielded this very domain, deep beneath the surface, carved from the bones of a mountain in a region which was deep in the unexplored wilderness which had been forgotten or abandoned in ages past.

He, his name long forgotten, had captured and enslaved men and women of various races, forcing them to perform menial tasks and labors, supplying to his needs and defending him and his chosen domain. He used them to mine, and he began to delve into the heart of the mountain. He also used his growing power to refine and expand it where the efforts of his enslaved fell short of his desire. Deeper and deeper he forced them to dig, unearthing resources to craft tools or fuel more of his experiments. As his mortal life began its decline, he discovered, not by accident, the path of immortality and devoted his learning and experimentation to its achievement. Finally, after decades of ambushing and enslaving, and the deaths of hundreds, he unraveled the bindings of his own mortality and became the lich. But the long list of horrors did not cease there. He instead created abominations in his likeness, pale echoes of his corrupted unlife that were simple and unthinking servants designed to perform the tasks that his enslaved had once expended themselves in performing. Those experiments and creations were not the only inhabitants of the Litch King's catacombs..

There came those who sought their own power in his shadow, or from the scraps of knowledge that he deigned to share. There were those who sought to worship at the feet of his power, believing mistakenly that he had some measure of divinity worthy of reverence. The lich was far from the first to seek greater power and dominance through arcane arts. Some of them had dabbled into extraplanar contact, breaching the fabric of the universe and bridging the gap long enough for invading armies to cross the distance. Those beings most often considered demonic, or infernal were among them. Other races as well had been introduced from one age to another, with predictable results. Wars were fought and empires fell, kingdoms rose from the rubble and the remaining races discovered a peace of sorts, even with those few remnants of demonic or infernal nature. In his pursuit of power, he gathered those he could, enslaved, enthralled or bargained with them for their services or favors. And his power and dominance continued to grow in his remote domain, hidden away from those who would contest or defy him. Inevitably though, the call for his downfall came. But in his arrogance, he dismissed the call as insignificant. He, the lich king, had a plan. He had managed to lure and trap the living avatar of a god, setting the stage for the finale and culmination of his ultimate goal. Absolute power would be his alone, uncontestable and unrestrained. He would become a living god among mortals.

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With a gasp and a sob I emerged from the black depths of the lich king's memories, like a man surfacing from the depths of a lake, seeking the warmth of sunlight and the life giving breath of clean air. But those memories were never as clean as the cool waters of a lake. They clung to my consciousness, rippling reflections of images and echoes of knowledge. Among those fragments was the understanding of where I was. Deep in the catacombs of the lich king's lair he had created a place where his most important works could be kept secure. A laboratory level where his chosen slaves lived, worked and died tending to his experiments. Where I sat, was one cell among the resting places of his once living servants and worshippers, far beneath the surface of the mountains that divided this continent, North from South. I knew.. In a vague way, the path to freedom. But it would be a long path of exploration, and the empty ache of my stomach did not give me much time to discover that path.

Somehow, as uncomfortable as the stone bed was, I managed to sleep. It was a blessing as well that in spite of those disturbing memories, they did not haunt me or disrupt my rest for that night. Instead, I awoke feeling somewhat refreshed, though perhaps a little stiff in the joints from the cold that seeped into me from the stone. Having only the flask, the dagger and the naginata, I left the servant's cell behind and walked toward the nearest junction. Now, at least, I knew how I needed to find my way out of this place and what I needed to look for; Etched into the corners of every crossing or branching of paths were symbols that I had missed previously. They were simple indicators for those who had lived, moved and served in these halls to show them what things lay where. I turned right, and began walking the length of the passage, then right again and left.. At the end of this last passage was that which gave me hope. A wide, spiraling set of stone stairs leading upward. I took a breath, and started climbing.

An hour or possibly more later, I was tired, and my legs had begun to ache. I had kept my head down and simply focused on one step, and then the next, only taking breaks for a swallow of water and then moving on. The abrupt end to my climb came as a surprise as the stairs terminated in a flat landing and another stone door, surrounded again with the same enchantment, and embedded with crystals as the first. I paused, and gave myself time to catch my breath, taking a small mouthful of water as I gazed on the carvings. They were just as disturbing and depraved as those on the first door, and I understood that this would likely become the common motif of what the lich had considered 'decoration'.

When I felt that my breathing was steady again, I repeated the process of opening the door, trickling mana into the crystal and watching as the door shivered, then jerked oddly before beginning to slide out of the way with a deep grumbling scraping sound as it receded into its pocket, only to stop halfway through the process and literally grinding to a halt, leaving barely enough room to squeeze through sideways. The air pressure changed, bringing fresher, though still stagnant smelling air into the long sealed stairwell. Beyond lay a large room, and as I peeked through the gap between the door and the wall, I observed several passageways leading in multiple directions. The doors to those passages had long ago been broken from their hinges, and either lay shattered on the floor or hanging by the rusted remains of the hinges. The center of the room itself was without any furnishing, though along the edges, broken vases, and small tables of carved stone sat where they had been forgotten, or lay broken from deliberate vandalism or some long past struggle. I sensed no movement within, and heard nothing but the slight whisper of the air.

I ducked back into the stairwell and readied myself, leading with my weapons foremost, I pressed my way between the door and the frame, scraping my chest and shoulders in the process, but emerging otherwise unharmed. For a moment, I stood there looking left and right, wondering which way to go. I, or rather the litch, recalled this room only vaguely. There was truly nothing remarkable about the room itself, other than the fact that it housed the now revealed secret passage into the lich king's sanctuary and the hiding place of its most jealously kept experiments. With no help coming from the memories, I fell back upon the experiences of my previous life, and turned left. The passageways were all uniformly eight feet across, from wall to wall, and just as below, doorways, both open and blocked by stone or ragged wood, alternated left and right. Subconsciously, though, I noticed a difference. Below, on the other side of the hidden door, the passages, rooms and hallways had been coated with a thick layer of dust from the ages. Here, however, the dust was not so thick. It was pushed to the side, gathered in drifts along the walls. But most importantly, and what set my teeth on edge, the dust held the footprints and marks of creatures having passed through in one direction or the other.

My footfalls slapped down on bare stone, rather than softly padding into the matt of stone dust. Perhaps I should have paid more attention to this fact, and to the movement of the air from behind me, but I heard nothing until I had passed the fourth empty arch of a doorway leading to what I believed were simply more empty cells.

The fourth was not as empty as I had believed. The only warning I had was the rapid scrabble of claws as the first denizen of the labyrinthine halls greeted me. I spun, dropping the flask and dagger to the ground and brought the sheathed naginata up vertically, barely deflecting the leaping black mass into the wall behind me and causing me to stumble to one side as I oriented on my attacker. At first I was stunned by the dim glow of the creature, the greens and yellows that swam over and around it flowed with life. It was the first that I had seen since I had been able to see in this lightless stone catacomb. The second thing I noted was its size and bulk. At the highest point, its back arched up to nearly the height of my hip, and though it was by no means well fed, it still must have massed nearly a hundred pounds, not nearly half of my weight, as I had guessed it to be, but certainly enough to have spun me around and shoved me aside with only a brief and passing impact.

Then it turned its head toward me and I saw the red, gleaming eyes and the long snout and whiskers of a rat. A rat the size and weight of a German Shepherd. Cautiously I backed off, giving it, and myself a bit of room and time to think. But it had no interest in thinking. Its claws scraped over the stone again, propelling it toward me as I shifted my hands on the scabbard and grip of my weapon, getting a two-handed grip and performing a voltė, stepping to one side with my lead foot, then even further with my drag foot and using the torque I created to swing the scabbard downward at the leaping rat's head. But I had made a mistake. I had forgotten that though I knew the moves, and had the timing right, this body was not fully trained to muscle memory that I had earned only within my mind, the motions had never been ingrained into it by repetition and effort.

I clipped the beast on its right shoulder as it passed me, causing it to twist in the air and land on its side and slide across the stone floor to impact against the wall as its legs spun in search of traction. When it managed to gain its feet again, its eyes were filled with rage and pain and it charged me as I was shedding the scabbard and taking a low guard stance, knees bent and blade held low and aligned with the center of my body, the point held in line between my eyes and the bulk of the rat's body as it charged toward me, snarling its hate and hunger for my flesh. Once again it leapt from five feet away, as I had predicted, but the end was far different this time. I turned my right shoulder inward, curling my right wrist until the blade was uppermost and pressed down with my left hand, bringing the point of the sword high in-line with the arch of the rat's desperate leap toward my face and throat. The jolt of the impact, as the rat impaled itself on the point, almost caused me to lose my grip on the sword. Its momentum drove the blade into its stomach and out through its back near the hip, but as the rat opened its mouth, somehow still believing it would manage to plant its teeth into my flesh, I bent with the momentum, turning and shoving it away as it passed, scraping its claws across my bare chest and then flinging it from my blade as I finished the rotation and stumbled back toward where the rat had begun its final charge. Blood spilled into the air as it shrieked in agony, landing with a loose-boned thud on the floor and sliding, spreading its blood even further as it went, and its intestines spilling forth from the drawn cut that split its skin and muscles open. I stepped further away, gasping as I watched the creature in its death struggle, arms and legs flailing as it sought to escape the agony and the encroaching cold as it bleed out its life and warmth onto the stone floor.

When the rat's struggles slowed to the occasional twitch and grasping curl of its paws, I looked down at the warmth spreading down my chest, then I cursed. That brief moment when it was closest had cost me. I was bleeding, though not all that much. Three shallow slices crossed my chest from right to left, ending in two more bleeding cuts on my left shoulder. I checked the rat again, finding it to have fallen still in the time it took me to inspect the damage. I stood straighter and moved across the hallway to my abandoned flask and dagger, and poured the cold water over my chest to wash out the wounds in an attempt to clean them. The sudden requirement for clothing or armor, along with bandages upgraded their importance on my hierarchy of needs. Failing that, I needed time and a place where I could concentrate and let my body at least stop bleeding while I recalled the spells I needed to heal.

I moved over and recovered the sheath-grip of the naginata and spent a moment pouring a little water over the blade, watching in amazement as the rats blood was shed, revealing clean, silvered-black metal, leaving no trace of the blood behind. I took another pull from the flask, and held it across my chest to help staunch the wound as I continued down the passageway.

The combination of the stinging pain in my chest, and the awareness that I might not be alone, or safe in any way, in these passages and halls had my alertness on high. My footsteps landed more softly, my breathing slower and my attention to the drifts and flows of mana more focused. By the time I found something different in my surroundings, the cuts on my chest had stopped bleeding as profusely, but I knew that any sudden movement, stretch or strain on my skin would open them instantly.

The difference was a doorway that remained closed, so I turned and examined it. Another of the lich's mana powered doors, but this one had dust piled up against the bottom, which meant that anything within, I hoped, would remain untouched and unknown.

I set the flask and dagger to one side of the door, and unsheathed the sword, setting the sheath too on the right side of the door. Then I glanced up and down the hallway, and brought my hand to the crystal, focusing on letting out a trickle of mana until it brightened enough to move the door to one side. The disturbed dust puffed away from the opening, and I braced myself, moving to one side of the door and peeking around the frame. Inside lay a replica of the room I had sat in before. A stone bed, basin and toilet column, this one with a trough above it and something that I interpreted as plumbing pipes leading from the high trough to both the toilet and the basin. The room was undisturbed and surprisingly little dust lay on the floor or the stone bed.

I glanced both ways along the hall and ducked down to recover my flask, dagger and sheath, then moved inside and triggered the door to close. Finally, a place to rest and recover that was marginally secure. There were differences in the room though, The most obvious from my vantage point were several pockets in the walls holding carefully cut earth-mana crystals within stone cradles. The other difference was the presence of water in the stone trough above the toilet. The water was brackish though, and smelled stale. I knew that I could resolve that at least, and now I had time to do so. First though, I had to take care of the wounds, then I could deal with the rest.

I sheathed the sword and set it and the flask on the bed with the dagger, settling down on the floor and leaning back against it. Again I stepped into my memorized knowledge of body magic, and reviewed what I had to do. With my eyes closed, I chose a rune sigil that contained the runes for both body, and recovery, then I formed the circles and fed the mana into it. The sensation was distracting as the skin of my chest wounds slowly closed, forming scabs and scars and finally fading away to fine lines. The effort was tiring but successful. I knew that it would become less taxing, and take less effort and time to complete the more I practiced. It was the necessity of that practice which worried me. Clothing, armor and better training for my body were needed in order to avoid having to seek out a safe place and perform healing.

The other cost, beside the exhaustion of using magic to heal my body, made itself evident with the sound of my stomach growling in protest. I had not eaten since waking in this world, and the time I could delay the need was running out. I thought briefly of retracing my steps and collecting the body of the rat, then I berated myself for leaving it in the first place despite my distaste for the thought of eating the thing. Hunger was a monster worse than the taste of rats. Still, I knew that there was no way that I could consume the flesh of a rat without some means of cooking it, and that provided yet another problem. Spell fire could answer that need, but it required fuel beyond mana to sustain, and the only thing that I had seen that might be usable were the remains of broken doors, which may or may not even burn depending on how old, rotten and dried out they were.

I sighed. My eyes ached, my head ached and my stomach growled again. The thought of backtracking the halls in search of a stinking rat carcass was offputting enough, so I resolved to do what would be necessary after the next encounter. For the moment, I needed just a little rest. Climbing up onto the uncomfortable stone pad, I lay down and gave myself over to sleep.

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0.3: Recollections and Exploration.

I could neither feel the cold stone beneath my feet, nor taste the air that moved from hall to hall and level to level as I traveled the halls of my domain. Still I could see the glowing shapes of those who served as they went about their tasks, cleaning, bringing food or moving supplies and materials from one place to another. Someone conversed with me, though the words and importance of them seemed to slip past me as we continued the inspection of the newly excavated supply depots, and confirmed that measures had been taken to secure and preserve the materials themselves. I passed a busy workshop, the propped open door revealing the alchemists and apothecaries hard at work providing medicines and potions that were needed by those who served me.

I needed no such thing for myself other than to occasionally enhance or correct the growth of my creations. But grudgingly I had admitted that those frail, pathetic mortals who retained their flesh required the expenditure of resources and materials in order to sustain them, and so sustain their ongoing efforts to fulfill my will and demand.

I stopped my cohort of guards, and the one who kept pace with me, to admire the latest work of my Gherum servant. It was such a frustratingly violent thing, but its talent for working in stone, and depictions of scenes that it and I both found pleasing remained the singular reason that it had not yet become another experiment or test subject for my latest attempts at merging mortal and infernal blood lines.

The shaped stone mural depicted a high tower, surrounded by masses of beings, all bent prostrate in reverence to the figure atop the highest point of the tower. The lines suggesting a radiance projected from the figure were tinted with mana, allowing those who could see in the arcane spectrum to observe the subtleties, The dark purple of the radiance, the shifting red and green of corruption and inversion of life among the masses. These colors and impressions were lost on most of my servants and slaves, but they and their appreciation for the art were of no matter to me. I turned and continued toward my destination.

It was suggested by my advisors, those who served me and knew of some of my goals, that some manner of provision should be made in the case of catastrophe. In spite of my certainty that my defenses and measures were sufficient to secure my domain, I acquiesced to their petty pleas and diverted valuable equipment, materials and supplies into small hoards that could be accessed at any time in the future, preserved and protected against the ravages of time. But that access was solely for myself or those who knew how to dismantle the protections. These larders, for lack of a better word, would provide all that was needed for a small company of guards who would expend their lives in my protection, should the safety of the catacombs be breached and myself be threatened. Later, perhaps, I would order the excavation of an escape route, though I highly doubted the need for such a thing. After all, who would care enough, or dare enough, to attempt such a foolhardy thing as threatening or attacking one who was on the verge of becoming a god. Had I still had the vocal cords to do so, I would have laughed out loud in contempt at the thought. Then I paused, catching a hint of a thought. There was something deeply wrong, an unease about what I was thinking, and my lack of feeling and sense..

My perception of my surroundings wavered as I looked down at my hands and saw only bones. I was struck by utter horror and revulsion that shattered the hold of the dream and threw me toward the waking world.

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I groaned and twisted, flailing as I struggled to surface from the dream, only coming fully awake as I felt the moment of weightlessness just before impact. I had, in my unconscious struggle against the nightmare, thrown myself from the sleeping platform and landed on the hard floor of the chamber. Still, I considered the ache and the cold of the floor to be significantly superior to the unfeeling, uncaring disconnection that was the lich kings' existence. At least, that was my opinion until my stomach decided that it was time to renew its objections to leaving it unfueled for so long.

With another groan, I untangled my limbs and pushed myself up to a sitting position, then reached out for the flask. If nothing else, I could stave off the hunger just a little longer by filling my belly with some water. It wouldn't keep me going for long, but I hoped it would for long enough.

The weight and heft of my naginata comforted me, and reminded me to stay on edge and aware of my surroundings as I crept down the halls and passages. I had chosen to continue in the direction I had been traveling before. Partly because I hoped to find something useful, and partly because I had no desire to lay eyes on the carcass of the huge rat that I had killed. I did not want to feel any kind of temptation to satisfy my empty stomach and risk becoming violently ill after consuming contaminated meat. The down side to this was the intermittent rumblings from my belly that sounded out in the silence.

I glanced up at the markings carved into the corner of a junction as I passed them and then promptly leapt back into the hallway that I had come from. I had briefly caught the life glow of two forms in the hallway to my right, and now I fought to keep my breathing steady as I listened for movement. The only sound was the light scratching of claws on the stone floor, and a soft squeak of protest, so I chanced a quick look, keeping my body well back and leaning out just enough to see them through one eye and then ducking back behind the corner.

Two of the huge rats, one smaller than the other. The larger one was sniffing around near the base of the opposite wall, the smaller one was doing the same, but around the bottom of a door on the near side. I could either retreat, or attack at this point, but I could not simply stay where I was. Retreating would mean doubling back and following a branch toward the crafting halls as marked on the junctions, and I had wanted to save that exploration for later. Some part of the memories that I had inherited suggested that there were underground farms ahead of me, places where herds and crops of various kinds had been grown to feed the ever increasing numbers that had gathered under the lich king's banner. Not that I had any hope of those crops still being there, but there might be something.

Now though, I had to deal with two opponents, and my experience with the first rat showed me that these things could be fast, agile and do significant damage to someone whose only armor was his skin. I briefly wished for some kind of ranged weapon until I remembered something else. I was a ranged weapon. I quickly chose Isa as my rune, then formulated the shape, speed, weight, time... The calculations and formulae blossomed in my mind and I stepped out from behind the corner, targeting the smaller of the two, pointing my fingers at its back and releasing the built up mana. The moisture in the air gathered, crackling as the ambient warmth in the air was rapidly displaced. The water crystallized rapidly in the shape of a long, thick needle that hung in the air between myself and the smaller rat, and although I witnessed the process through the lens of expanded time, The creatures seaming to move in slow motion compared to my own thoughts and movement, I worried that at any moment the rats would both turn and charge at me before I could release the spell. The result though, was better than I had anticipated as a thin lance of ice sped across the distance and impaled the rat from hip to neck, and jutted out through the other end. It died without a struggle or much of a sound beyond the whistle of the lance's passage and the wet sounding 'thunk' of the needle impaling it from end to end.

The remaining rat, having finally become aware of my presence, spun to confront me, bracing itself on broad spread feet and then charged in a maddened fury. I only had time to fall into a guard with both hands on the grip of the naginata, but as the rat jinked to my left, I realized I had left my right side open as the point of my blade followed it. The sudden scrabble to my right caused me to side-step and bring the pommel up, deflecting its charge but it still managed to leave several shallow scratches on my thigh in passing. I leapt further out into the junction to give myself some room and brought my weapon back in line just as the rat charged again. I jabbed quickly towards its face, prompting it to jerk back, cautious of the shining steel edge I presented. I took a breath, and choked up on the grip as I leaned forward, then lunged toward it, feinting to its right and then jabbing in the other direction as I let the length of the grip slide through my hands, successfully landing a hit and sinking the blade into its shoulder. It screeched in agony and fury as it pulled itself off of the blade and retreated a short distance, then charged in again. But I had anticipated this, and perceived the slowing of time as I used the ice rune again, sweeping my blade crosswise to the rat's path to coat the floor in slick, black ice. Four sets of claws uselessly sought traction on the smooth, hard surface, losing its balance and spilling the rat onto its side as it spun across the floor and into the waiting point of my nagi.

The last shriek ended in a bubbling froth as the rat struggled briefly, emptying its bladder and bowels, and then submitted to the summons of death.

I freed my blade and stepped back, listening and looking down all four paths, but only silence and darkness greeted me, so I slumped back against a wall and considered the two bodies that lay in the hallway. Now I had to choose which of the two to carry. I had no twine or bindings of any kind, and only one hand to carry my choice of dog sized beasts with me back to my temporary lair. In spite of my revulsion toward the thought of eating one of these creatures, my mouth had begun to water and my stomach growled, prompting me to hurry up and get on with it.

Dragging the larger of the two rats behind me, I retraced my steps. Before leaving the area I had scavenged wood from the few broken doors that retained some solidity, and piled up my winnings into a neighboring cell. Each cell had its own holes, both for the body waste of its previous occupants, and above for what little air had once moved between the many levels of the catacombs. I knew, from the memories of the lich, that there had been a system of mana powered artifacts pushing air into every level, and that the miniature tunnel system reached all the way to the surface. Likely, it had been through those very ventilation tunnels that these huge rats had made their way down to where I was. Why they had stayed, and not returned to the surface and more readily available food sources was beyond me. Possibly they simply couldn't.

I set up a fire under one such vent, and set about using my dagger to cut the rat into small enough pieces that I could manage cooking it. The process was awkward, and the results were clumsy, but effective enough. Cleaning the meat was essential, and I used the water from the flask to accomplish this.

I had been rather surprised, and pleasantly so, to find the flask full in the morning after having consumed at least half of it the day before. I suspected that it was part of the enchantment, but I had to leave that study for a time when I was not under pressure to fill my stomach, nor on basic survival mode. I used a touch of magic to get the fire started, then skewered the chunks that I had laid out on the skin, then one by one I roasted the skewers and drooled in anticipation. It was filling but left much to be desired. It was stringy and gamey and tasted nothing like chicken. But at least I had a full stomach, and more cooked for later.

I wrapped the last of the cooked portions in the skin, and carried them to my cell, checking the hallway in both directions and hoping that the scent of smoke and cooking meat would not draw attention too soon.

I used the stagnant water to wash the floor, using handfuls from the cells basin to splash it over where I had disassembled the carcass, and flushed the offal down the toilet. There was no point in leaving the meat and bones to rot so close to my sanctuary, temporary or not.

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0.4: Of Blood and Fear.

Was I more surprised, or disappointed? It was hard to tell and more likely it was a mixture of both. The sole pathway to the moss and mushroom farms that I knew of had collapsed, either by natural effects of time or by intent. The possibility of some smaller servant passages leading to the farms occurred to me, but the lich had never deigned to tread them, so I would be hard pressed to find them even by accident. I had other, more pressing, concerns. On my way to find the farms, I had passed the area where I had encountered the rats, only to find that the one that I had ice-kabobbed and left behind had been removed some time during the 'night'.

Three sets of small, semi-humanoid footprints tracked through the pooled blood and circled the area. Smaller than a human, but human shaped while ending in claws. Some sort of subterranean goblinoid, according to the lich's memory. That meant aggressive smaller beings who worked together against any and all enemies. Cunning, vicious and carnivorous to the point of cannibalism.

This was bad on multiple fronts. Not only had I managed to stumble into their hunting range, but because I had left behind the carcass of what was likely their favored prey, they were now aware that something else was in their territory.

I felt the impetus to leave the area, but I also had to know what else lay undiscovered in this section of the lich's underground warrens. I turned around, leaving the collapsed hallway behind me and retraced my path back to the last branch of passageways. Turning left, I kept myself to one side or the other of the hall, avoiding the piles of dust and stone that lined the passageway and crept as silently as I could on the cold bare stone.

One of the most constant qualities of the catacombs that I had almost become numb to was the silence. There was no rushing sound of the wind, or rain, or bird calls, nor any other noise indicating where life might be. So as I neared an intersection, the sudden presence of sound made me pause. It was a now and then wave of light clicks that could have been mistaken for the sound of rain drops that came to my ear and then fell away. It didn't abruptly start or stop, but started a little at a time and was followed by a rush of clicks and then died out to silence again.

I was, therefore, on alert when I neared the four way junction, watching the passage ahead and keeping my shoulder to the right hand wall while looking further down the left branch. But the sound came strongest from the right, so I kept myself to cover as much as possible. However, as I came close enough to take a look around the corner of the intersection, the sound had stopped. Cautiously, I leaned forward, keeping my naginata held close to my body, but the hallway seemed to be empty. There was no light or motion for as far as I could see, and then I glanced up. The five foot long line of sickly green-yellow life mana that hung in the corner of the wall and ceiling startled a yelp from me, which prompted the sudden waving of long forelimbs in my direction. I brought the blade of my naginata up and across, just as the giant centipede lurched in my direction.

The crunch of chiton being crushed and the hissing scream of the centipede caused me to jump back and fall, rolling onto my shoulder and back to my feet as the creature dropped from its high perch, landing in a tangle of multiple legs that quickly sorted itself out into a tightly coiled S-shape, its antennae waving back and forth tasting the air. One of the antennae was now dragging along the floor and leaving a green ichor, having been broken by the instinctive swipe of my naginata. I took a slow step back and the creature moved forward, leaving no doubt in my mind that it would pursue if I decided to retreat. Beneath its flattened head, two hooks secreted a thick viscous venom, as though it drooled in anticipation of a feast.

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"The first lesson that I teach you, boy, will be the one that you must always remember and practice." Dalgoran stood with his hands clasped behind him, his long beard covering his chest and only a pair of loose trousers belted with a length of cloth covering his body.

"The foundation of your ability to defend or attack will always be in your feet, and how they are placed and aligned in relation to your enemy." Dalgoran loosened his stance and shifted his feet, his knees bending slightly as his left hand moved up to his chest, making a fist, and his right hand extended with a slight twist of his shoulders, coming in line with his right foot.

"All of your attacks will align with your lead foot, and so long as your foot is toward your enemy, so too will your blade follow that line."

I followed Dalgoran's example, positioning my body to mirror his, and following each footstep he took with one of my own, correcting my footing often until it began to settle in and become natural. It was the first of hundreds of lessons. But it was always the first thing that we did after the first hours of running, climbing, swimming and calisthenics.

These dreams felt like a lifetime, much like those spent in the company of the sarcastic and biting commentary of Maridu the mage. And just as the memories of those dreams of learning from Maridu seeped into my waking world in the dark, using magic to see mana, and to understand how the runes formed and guided mana to create a magical effect, so too did the lessons of the warrior Dalgoran seep into my waking world, guiding my body to perform better, cleaner attacks and defenses.

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I firmed up my stance as I chose my target, envisioning the line that my naginata blade would follow past the multiple spiked legs of the centipede, and into the vulnerable gap between body segments. Then, bringing the blade of my weapon in line, I crossed the distance between us with a "Huuh" of expelled breath, I ended my charge on my lead foot and twisted my body to create more torque as my left hand pulled upward on the pommel. The blade nearly hissed as it sliced through the air as I brought the edge of the blade down between the body segments behind the head. Once again, the crunch of chiton sounded, followed by the clang of metal impacting on stone as the edge of the naginata easily cut through the giant centipede and into the stone beneath.

Then I had to jump back again twice as the rapid clatter of its legs impacting the stone of the hallway filled the air. The head of the centipede still grasped and bit at nothing as it tumbled around in spastic convulsions, but the rest of its body lashed out in agony and instinctively thrashed about seeking retribution for its inevitable death. The sound of its death struggles rattled around in the stone hallways, clacking and scraping over the surface of the stone. I backed further away as the hard chiton spikes of its feet and rear pinschers flailed closer to me briefly.

As I watched the final twitches of the giant centipede, I realized that this creature was very likely another link in the food chain. One that sat below the dog-sized rats and the goblins who probably hunted both for sustenance. Still, the venom that beaded at the ends of those powerful looking mandibles concerned me. I did not know much about centipedes, or their cousins the millipedes, but I did know that their venom could kill children one hundred times their size. Being bitten by one of these five-foot long monsters would mean a very painful death.

I don't know how long I watched the centipede while I pondered yet another herald of how vulnerable I was in this world, but I knew that it was far too long when I heard a disturbance in the direction of the hallway from which I had come. Somewhere in the distance, behind one turn or another small voices and the slapping of bare feet came to my ears, forcing me to move around and past the creature coiled in death, and travel deeper into the maze of hallways and cavernous rooms. I kept myself from giving in to panic as I moved, I did not want my footsteps to inform the goblins of which path I had taken, but I also did not have the time to move slowly. At the next branch, I paused, overwhelmed by curiosity.

I knew that I was running a risk by staying near to the site of my conflict with the centipede just to get a look at the goblins, but I felt a need to confirm that it was indeed goblins that ruled these corridors, so I leaned on the memories of the lich, and chose a direction of retreat, leaning my left shoulder to the stone corner and looking in all four directions to make certain I would not be ambushed from behind as I spied on the creatures that came to inspect the scene of conflict.

For several long minutes I leaned against the wall, forcing myself to breathe slowly and not lean my head out past the edge of the corner and look. The sound of bare feet slapping the stone had ceased, but now and then I heard the sound of soft hisses and guttural clicks. Then I heard one sound that confirmed their presence, a thud and the sound of a wooden shaft against stone, then the hiss of an admonishing voice. I waited, counting to twenty as I listened to the movement around the corner and thirty meters down the hallway from where I hid, then I slowly leaned out until my right eye could take in the scene.

The centipede had finally released its hold on life almost in the very center of the intersection, its body coiled up in a pile, legs clenched defensively and grasping at itself. The head that I had separated from the body lay next to the wall, just beyond my line of sight behind the pile of green dripping chiton. Around it, three diminutive humanoid figures crouched warily while a fourth poked at the head with a stone tipped, wooden spear.

All four of the goblins looked like scrawny old men with heads, hands and feet disproportionately too large for their bodies, jagged carnivorous teeth and fingers that ended in ragged claws. They had long narrow ears that sloped back behind their heads and came to points that moved and twitched nervously as they kept their eyes moving around their immediate environment. I drew back slowly, keeping my breathing even and reviewed what I had seen. The creatures were no taller than four feet on average, wore nothing more complicated than rat hide armor over their chests, and loin cloths most likely made from the same material. Their weapons had wood, or some similar material for shafts, and the glossy, gleaming heads were from chipped flint or obsidian. Either way, they seemed sharp enough for the purpose, and I had no desire to find myself on the receiving end of one of those spears, or the axe held by the one who had survived losing most of his left arm.

I listened as they had a soft discussion, then peeked out just as two of the goblins lowered themselves to the floor and began sniffing the stone.

"Shit! Can they track me by smell!?" I wondered in panic, and ducked back behind the corner again. I understood then that it was long past time for me to leave, so keeping my naginata close to my body, I turned and retreated even as I listened to one of the goblins hiss excitedly. My slow retreating footsteps turned into a run as a hunting cry rang out behind me.

They had caught my scent and they were in pursuit. As I broke into a run, I went over the vague map that I had in my head of the lich's domain. The entire place was a maze of turns and intersections. Hallways lined with cells led to enormous halls and work spaces, or just devolved into more mazes of bed chambers, kitchens, storage depots of supplies. Somewhere in all of that, I had to lose my pursuers and find my way back to the room that I had chosen as my refuge.

The sound of feet slapping against stone echoed in the hall behind me just as I turned a corner and dove down another passageway. Briefly I contemplated turning around and confronting my pursuers, but an open area melee would mean losing any advantage, even if I had the advantage of reach and height on the goblins. I burst into an open area, pillars lined the walls and the ceiling arched overhead to the center like a cathedral. Like so many places in the lich's domain, the walls and ceiling were carved or shaped into murals depicting suffering and ruin; around the perimeter, several archways led off into other sections of the warrens. Some of them still had doors, partial or surprisingly whole, but I had no time to appreciate any of it as I heard the sounds of the hunters closing in. I grunted in dismay and moved behind the nearest of the four-foot wide pillars, my naginata held upright before me in both hands, and waited for the goblins to enter the room.

I did not have long to wait as the slapping sound of their feet became sharp and clear and entirely too close. I kept my eyes turned toward the center of the room, forcing myself to breathe slowly and holding my first attack for the moment that they inevitably paused to consider which archway they believed I had fled down.

The moment that I caught sight of their leader, the one armed goblin with the flint axe, I turned, moving opposite the small group and keeping the pillar between myself and them until I had circled behind them.

Harsh spitting and hissing came from two of them until one sharp barking command silenced them, but by that time I had rounded the pillar, stepped clear of it and brought my naginata around in a low hissing arch across the back of the trailing goblin. The blade bit deep, scraping across the spine of the creature, causing it to take a stumbling step forward into one of its companions before falling to its knees and then to the floor. It screamed in agony as its spear fell and clattered across the floor to the feet of the axe wielding leader. The other three spun around and scampered back as they caught sight of me. I did not give them time to recover as I bounded forward and drove the blade of my weapon into the chest of another spear wielder before it could even bring its weapon to bear.

With two of my pursuers down, the other two quickly spread out, attempting to flank me and attack from the sides, both of them screeching and barking alerts to one another and, just as likely, alerting any others in the vicinity. The last spear wielding goblin must have had some maniac level of courage, because it chose that moment to level its stone-headed spear and charge just as I was pulling my blade from its dead companion. I danced back and to one side, evading its jabbing attacks and doing my best not to get pinned against the pillar as I parried and blocked its thrusts. The axe wielder circled and barked encouragement while the first goblin howled its agony in gradually quieter whimpers.

One jab managed to get past my defenses and scraped a cut across my thigh, leaving a thin line that dripped red, but the gamble cost the goblin his life as I brought the blade of my naginata across his chest in a downward strike that severed its arm at the elbow, the sickening crunch of bone was drowned out under the agonized scream and the sudden silence as I followed the move by turning my body and lashing out with my right foot and connected with its neck, just below the skull. The goblin tumbled and slid across the smooth stone floor, coming to rest on its back as it began bleeding out its life, unconscious.

With three of its companions dead or dying, the leader of the group made the wise decision to retreat. With one last glance at me, it turned and ran for one of the far archways. I knew that it was running for the safety of its tribe, and that meant that I had run out of time. Once again, I drew on the knowledge of the lich, and chose one of the nearer archways to my right, lurching into a jog and leaving a thin trail of blood in my wake. If any more goblins were close, then I would be quickly overwhelmed by sheer numbers. The best chance that I had was to choose some maze of passageways and muddy the trail with overlapping and crisscrossing paths.

It was a mistake, and it was one that I hoped I would live long enough to learn from. Though I had killed three of the four scouts, or hunters or whatever they may have been, the last one had fled, and I had hoped its kin were far enough away that I could escape cleanly. I had not counted on having to double back, losing time and marking more clearly where I had been because of dead end passages or collapsed and impassable hallways.

As time passed, I heard more and more screeching calls echoing from more and more intersections. It was as I passed down one hallway away from pursuit that I stopped and stared at yet another shaped mural. Something about it caught my eye, something familiar about the mass of humanoids clustered around the depiction of a tower, and the lines arching out from the top..

And then I turned and ran, clutching my naginata at my side and trying to remember the sequence of turns that had been walked once before. A left here, a right there, past two more intersections and then stopping, right in the middle of a long hallway with no doors or arches to either side. There was nothing here, no shelter to be seen and yet, it felt vitally important. There was something here, if I could just find it before the mass of goblins closed the loop and caught me. I breathed deep and leaned against the right hand wall, my dirt and sweat covered hand gripping at the stone as I fought to recall the dream, the memory of what had transpired here, in this long, seemingly empty and unimportant hallway.

I closed my eyes and calmed myself, then opened them again and felt, the flow of mana as much as I perceived it. Then I saw it, the subtle warping of mana within the stone of the right wall ten paces ahead of me. I limped closer, my eyes roaming over the wall seeking out and finding the almost undetectable lines where the mana was forced around a gap in the stone. A gap that ran around the perimeter of a door.

Once again I closed my eyes, trying desperately to recall the memory.

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"Only those of your chosen and yourself will know of this place, my liege." The shaper said as she stepped clear of the doorway, turning her head and looking at me. "And only your chosen will know how to disperse the enchantment upon the door."

I nodded and brought my arms up, the bones of my hand glowing as I summoned forth the mana, pulling it from all around me and shaping it with calculations and formulae that had been lost to the races of the surface for over a century, or so I had been told. Of the elements that had been used in magic through the ages, the power of Time and Space was one which had so much potential. It was indeed just as powerful as it was dangerous, and it was little wonder then that the god of time was so jealous of its knowledge. Even such a petty thing as the spell that I used now, sealing this room away, obscuring its existence from the eyes of both mortal and immortal alike, was considered the highest of the lost magics.

In ages past, when the gods had walked the surface of the world, many had wielded the powers of time and space, crossing distances in moments that now took months, or years. The ancients had created artifacts that held miniature vaults that could contain entire treasuries, or preserve the dead only to be revived by the priests of their respective gods, blessed as they were with the last and most profound of magics, that of Spirit and Life. If I had lips, I would have smiled, because I had ferreted out those secrets. Try as they might, the gods could not withhold their powers from me, for I too would walk the surface of the world as they once did, the pinnacle of power, immortal.

But for now, I wove the formula, weaving it into the stone itself from wall to wall, floor to ceiling, corner to corner to corner and finally around the lintel of the door, protecting, obscuring and preserving that which was within. To me, it seemed a negligible thing, but it pacified my first priestess, and with her easing of mind, came the guarantee of her zealous guidance of my followers, servants and slaves.

Just as I wove the last of the mana into the spell, I left one single loop highlighted. I glanced at my priestess, and she nodded her acknowledgement. She understood the purpose of that key sequence of runes, and she would share it with no one. Then, I let it fade as the whole of the enchantment sealed.

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My eyes opened, and I was once again Nazaqi Hayle, I was myself. The hand that pressed to the wall was not composed of bare bones and malice held together by mana and will, it had flesh and blood, muscle and tendon, warmth and sensation. My ears now heard more than simply the voices of long dead advisors, the clack and scrape of long rusted armor, and the bowing murmurs of worshippers of something that aspired to godhood. My ears heard the rush of air with every breath that I took and released. They also heard the subtly growing clamor of hunting calls in the distance.

I had time, but not so much time that I could dither and revel in the feel of being alive and human. I could sense the door before me more than I could see the slight disturbance that outlined it. I placed my hand in the center and felt for the subtle leak of mana from within the runic construct, and what I felt filled me with doubt. Where my own magic had a few rings of runes and sigils that formed intricate calculations and formulae that drew in mana and directed it in a particular way, this..

This was layers and layers of spiraling formulae that interlinked with even more layers. All of it surrounded a singular rune of intimidating complexity that was simultaneously elegant and laughably simple. But a distant howl reminded me that I could not simply stand there and study this enchantment, no matter how amazing it was. I felt around the weave of the spell for what I knew was there, and upon finding it, I grasped it with my will, and pulled.

The mana that had sustained the enchantment poured forth into the surrounding stone in a coruscating rainbow of colors, the wall, floor and ceiling sparkled with the wave and then slowly faded into the distance in both directions. Then, for an instant, I thought that I had failed. The wavering disruption that had outlined the door was gone, and the wall remained unchanged. Simply a wall of stone, except for one single difference.

High on the wall protruded the very tip of a crystal, and I lifted my hand hoping and praying to anything and anyone that I was right, I let my mana flow into the crystal nub and stepped back.

With a clunk, the wall sunk into itself, the door sliding inward for three inches and then with a low rumble it moved to the right, sliding into its recess. Light which had not been seen in the lich's domain in an age spilled forth, brightening the hall and blinding me for a moment. Slowly my eyes adjusted, tearing at the sudden brightness and the piercing ache of seeing light rather than simply observing the world through the subtle flows of mana.

The room beyond was so different from everything that I had seen for the last several days that I had trouble believing what I was seeing. Thick carpet covered the floor, shelves lined the walls with scrolls, tomes and jars of multiple shapes and sizes. Chests were stacked one upon another, and the beds that sat against the far wall were not bare, unforgiving stone, but creations of wood, thick mattresses and blankets. I took one hesitant step forward, and found myself weeping in disbelief mixed with an almost unbearable hope.

As the cries of the approaching hunters reminded me of how precarious my position was, I glanced left and right down the length of the hall, then leapt into the room and turned, seeking out the mechanism to close the door behind me. Again, the presence of a simple protruding crystal showed me the way. I let my mana flow into the crystal and the door rumbled closed, shutting out the dark and the threat of the hunting goblins. As the door thudded closed and slid back into place, concealing the room, I turned and surveyed my surroundings. All that remained within the room was myself, and a trove of incalculable value. I put my back to the door and slid down slowly, laying the naginata across my lap as I simply stared at the room and its contents.

To my right, tall wooden wardrobes gleamed in the light of the earth-mana crystals' warm yellow light. Beyond that, against the wall some kind of stove, and shelves with jars and boxes, further along an archway led to another smaller room where I could see a tub with brass or bronze fixtures. Then the far wall, lined with five empty beds that brought an ache of yearning from within me. To my right, the wall was lined with chests and more shelving as well as armor and weapons racks, still bearing the weight of their assorted pieces.

Five full suits of armor of various kinds and sizes, racks with bows, crossbows, swords, axes, spears, maces and hammers. Here, in the depths of the earth, hidden in the cold empty halls inhabited by monsters and beasts sat a sanctuary that had endured the passing of time, yet untouched by it. Still I sat, running my hand through the inch thick softness of the carpet that separated my skin from the cold of the stone of the floor. I leaned my head back against the stone door and closed my eyes, and barely I thought I heard the cries of the hunt passing by. The muffled sound of guttural voices raised in confusion were cut short by the determined commands of others as they lost the scent, then retreated as the hunters doubled back in the belief that I had tricked them.

For several minutes I remained where I was, hesitant to hope that I had lost their pursuit. But eventually, only the silence remained and I found that I had a new worry as my stomach reminded me of how long it had been since I ate, and what a disappointing meal it had been.

I pushed myself to my feet, and looked around me selecting which of my needs and curiosities to satisfy first. Looking down at myself and seeing the dirt, grime and dried blood, I made my choice.

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0.5: Shedding Tainted Dreams.

The bath was nearly an orgasmic experience, and I could have lain in the tub soaking in the hot water and the scent of soap for days after scrubbing the filth and grime from my skin. But hunger and hope drove me from those blissful waters and I found myself looking from jar to jar and box to box wondering what treasures I was about to discover as I stood before the metal and stone construct that so closely resembled a cooking stove. Taking a breath, I moved to the right and crouched down to open one of the free standing boxes and my mouth watered as I beheld chilled cuts of meat, and lumps of cheese and vegetables that must have been stored fresh from harvest on the surface. With hands that nearly shook, I closed the chilling box and stood up to inspect the rest. I found a cooking pot, and a pan as well as utensils and knives designed for use in preparing food and I almost started immediately, but there was more that I needed to know. The jars revealed spices and salt, some were familiar, and others smelled and tasted very strange to me.

I discovered a few that I knew that I would be coming back to, but I pressed on, and found cooking oil. The stove was exactly what I had believed it to be. Three stone disks, carved and inlaid with some metal in geometric patterns and runes that used mana and converted it to heat the stone.

With a laugh that I stifled, for fear of alerting any goblins to my presence, I started in. For a while, there was nothing but the heat coming from the stove and the growing scent of heating cooking oil in the pan accompanying the sound of meat and vegetables being chopped and spiced.

For the first time since emerging from the crystalized mana coffin, I allowed myself to let slip the memories of my own life. Blurred faces and experiences floated in and out of my awareness. The happy sound of voices from another room while I prepared a meal for myself and friends, the rush and roar of traffic as I walked to work, the sound of pencils and paper, and the droning voice of some professor. All of it was vague, muted and dim, as though seeing and feeling it all through a thick blanket. I felt like I should have been experiencing some kind of emotion from it, but that too was muted, and I wondered why. Why would the memories of my own life feel so distant when the 'memories' of learning combat, magic and the knowledge that was imparted by the lich were so much clearer?

I paused in the act of stirring the fry of meat and vegetables in the pan and rested my hands on the counter as a wave of doubt and frustration overcame me. As I pondered that question, another question came to mind; Who was I in that life? Not my name, but as a person? How would I feel if I remembered my own life more clearly? Would I feel loss, grief, rage? What would I do with that knowledge? The question of how my memories had been muted occurred, as well as the question of who.

But the answer to that last seemed obvious to me, and from that answer, other answers could be assumed, but not confirmed or corrected.

I resumed preparing my food, determined not to have my first real food spoiled by the sourness of perceived loss and blame that might turn uselessly to anger for which I had no available target.

Food, as anyone who has studied peoples and cultures outside of their own could confirm, is a balm to the mind, heart and body. So as I took my first bite, I felt that comfort settle into me, chewing lightly cooked vegetables, well prepared and seasoned meat, and reveled in the flavors they combined to create. I sat on the floor, there being no chairs, and leaned back against one of the beds with the support of several confiscated pillows. The plate in my hand, and a wooden mug of clean water from the spout above the sink, I dug into my first true meal in this world with enthusiasm. As the food started hitting my stomach, I lifted my eyes and contemplated the rest of the room's contents.

This room and its contents had been meant to be as much a temporary refuge as it had been an armory. The supplies laid in here would have kept the lich's five most trusted personal guards well equipped for a journey of relocation, and to protect their master along the way. Now that I was fueled, and my aching stomach filled, I left the plate on the floor beside the bed and heaved myself to my feet to investigate further.

The armoires standing against the wall captured my attention first, and I moved to open them. Within hung robes and clothes of various designs, some that baffled me, but others felt vaguely familiar. Tired of being naked, I dug through the first armoire in search of something that would fit me at least for the time being.

That ended up including a large tunic and some draw-string pants, as well as some thick stockings. None of which matched in any way. Between the clashing colors and the obviously disparate styles, I looked like someone who had jumped into a fantasy festival with a full wallet and a sense of style distorted by alcohol. Still, it had been some time since I had felt anything on my skin besides the chilling cold of the warrens. As I brushed my fingers over the hanging garments, some left the tingle of magic on the tips of my fingers and I parted the hooks to reveal them more fully. On some, worked leather or silk stitching lined or trimmed edges in runic script, and I could sense the magic within them, but like with the flask that I had left behind, it would take time and concentration to determine the nature and purpose of those enchantments. I found shoes and boots within the drawers of the last wardrobe, one pair of which settled onto my feet as though they had been made for me. The boots were thick soled leather and beaded felt that came up to mid calf. They looked like they had been crafted in the Mongolian traditional style, but the colors were off being primarily in black and shades of red and orange. Of course, they only added to the increasingly horrific clash of styles and colors, but without anyone else around to criticize my choices, I felt satisfied in wearing them for comfort.

Next, I spent some time touring the stands of armor, quickly dismissing all but one of them because they were either far too heavy and sized for someone even larger than I, or far too small for me and sized for someone over a foot shorter than I and so pointless to consider using. The weapon stands contained the assortment that I had noted earlier, and once again there were those among them that gave off a subtle feel of enchantment. The swords of various kinds were mostly obvious by the etched and inlaid runes and the heavy crystals seated into guards and pommels. The markings on the bows, spears and axes were less obvious, though no less powerfully enchanted. The armor and weapon stands alone were a treasure trove, but as I stood there contemplating which of the weapons, if any, I should use, my eyes drifted back to the naginata that leaned against the wall by the door. I knew then that while I might be able to use any of them.. with some passing ability, the Naginata would feel the most natural in my hands.

My eyes returned to the stands of armor and the one set that I had passed over. It stood in the place of honor among the rest. Crafted primarily in leather, padded in some places and hardened, thick plates of leather in others. The shoulders and upper arms were padded leather with dull black chainmail attached to it in such a way that shaking or moving it around failed to produce much in the way of noise. The lower arms were attached to bracers with bands of dull steel plates along the length, what was once known as splint mail. The back and sides were made of another kind of leather entirely, and though flexible and soft to the touch I believed it would be proof enough against piercing or cutting weapons. The legs of the armor set were similarly made of leather and splint, with dull black chainmail to cover the areas that had to flex, but were vulnerable to slashing weapons. Set below the armor were a pair of what I could only describe as battle sandals. Broad, leg wraps lay in a tied bundle over thick, textured soles. Last, but not least was the helmet that sat atop the armor stand. It looked like it had been formed from a single piece of metal from brow to the beginning of the lobster tail that covered the back of the neck and upper vertebrae. The face and neck were covered by two separate pieces; a visor and bevor that swiveled on the same hinge point set just above and behind the temple of the wearer. If not for the subtle etchings and lines that turned it into a work of fierce art, I would have called it a German sallet and bevor. But the scrollwork was from an entirely different culture. Still, I believed the whole set might very well fit me, even if I had to make some adjustments for fine tuning.

I briefly thought about continuing my investigations into what lay within the room, but I could feel my body sagging, and my mind becoming lethargic. Instead, I chose to make my discoveries entirely sleep related and stepped out of my new boots just in time to fall gratefully into a bed with a thick mattress and thick, soft covers.

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In a fit of rage I moved through the cold stone passages, servants who dared raise their heads either turned and fled, or raised them far too late and died speared upon my sharped bone claws, or were shredded and left in tatters of flesh with their blood sprayed across the walls.

The arrogance of the lust demon! The pure hubris of the creature to impose upon me such a demand. A hundred sacrifices for every birth was an almost unendurable cost. Surely the lust demon had no domain of its own, and could therefore never understand how costly such a price was. His advisors had campaigned against the bargain, had spent hours describing the ways in which it would weaken his hold on his hidden realm and the efforts to recover those losses would bring his forces dangerously close to collapse by over extension.

Still.. If the experiment were to be completed, if it were successful, he could be assured that never again would those in his personal guard dare to attempt betraying him. And that.. Only if the trap worked, and the despicable Prime fell into his clutches. I felt a shiver of dread and loathing invoking the Prime. But his champion had made the mistake of coming to My domain in some deranged delusion of righteousness..

Now that champion alternately stewed and coughed out its pathetic life in the depths of my dungeon in an oubliette filled with murky water.

My rage, this time, had been the result of one of my personal guards having deliberately destroyed a phylactery that contained an enchanted stone tied to my essence. That the betrayal had been purchased by some unknown rival, did not escape my notice. That they could be turned against me was every reason to give the damnable demon what it demanded. But there was no guarantee that the hybrid creations would be stable, no guarantee that they would be dependent upon my mana, and no guarantee that they would be sufficiently loyal.

Still.. The risks had to be taken and the price paid.

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No matter how comfortable a bed is, if a person cannot find true rest, it can leave them in a state of exhaustion that will linger and impede their abilities. I felt as though I was coming down with a cold, so thick and slow were my thoughts. Rolling free of the covers, and placing my feet on the carpet, I almost upended the plate of food that I had left unfinished before I fell asleep.

I sighed, picked it up and took it to the stove. I would reheat it for breakfast. I felt like the only thing that had any chance of chasing away the thickness of my thoughts and the dragging feel of my movements would be a cold shock to my senses, so I shuffled over to the basin next to the toilet near the back of the room and placed my hands on either side as I leaned forward.

Looking down, I saw a face reflected in the still water. The face of a man whose name I could not remember; My face. It was never what any woman had ever called anything more than tolerably handsome. A blunt chin, crooked nose, and sandy blonde, curly hair that was mostly white at sixty three years old. The scar on my cheek from when a propane tank detonated and sent shrapnel spinning throughout the workshop where I was employed in my twenties was still visible, though hidden by more lines and wrinkles. If the steel shard had been an inch higher and a bit to the right, I would have lost my eye in the incident.

As it was, only the old shop worker who couldn't seem to break his bad habits had been injured, and that only enough to put him in the hospital for a week. Suddenly, a wave of disorientation washed through me as the face in the reflection changed.

Now I was looking into the pale grey eyes of a handsome man in his late twenties. He had high cheekbones and thick dark hair, His neck and shoulders were well defined and proportionate in an athletic build.

Although I could recall the 'memories' of Maridu and Dalgoran and dreams of the time that I spent learning from them helped to chase away the revolting miasma of the dreams of the lich, still I only vaguely remembered my own life. Mostly it was bits and pieces, blurry images that seemed to feel right, but were also disconnected in a way.

I felt my sense of balance waver, and my hands clung to the edges of the stone basin in order to stay upright. This was not my body. It was not the body that I had lived over six decades in and been so familiar with. That body, I knew. I had earned every ache, pain, scar and grey hair with years of hard work and hard play.

This body, the young, fit, firm and well built body was not my own. Yet, in its own way, it fit me like a second skin. I knew every move it could make, I felt the flow of its muscles and the rapid beat of its heart. I also felt the almost terrifying potential it contained. It lurked just below the surface, as if looking up through a sheet of ice at an enormous stone tower that could crush me the moment the ice broke, and again the nearly overwhelming dizziness almost took me from my feet as my knees wobbled, my hands shook even while they clenched, white knuckled around the rim of the basin.

'My hands..' the subtle subconscious thought whispered through me and into my conscious awareness. 'My hands, and My legs. Regardless of how, or why, this is what I have been given. This is mine and no other can claim them, use them or command them without My will driving them.' And with that thought, it felt like watching a movie of a crystal vase that had been knocked onto the floor and shattered, suddenly reversing time; the glittering shards gathering, reforming into a vase before the reassembled object leapt up into the air and settled onto a shelf.

I felt myself, then, as I settled fully into my body. I claimed it, felt the blood flowing through my veins, the subtle flex and pull of every muscle as they firmed up my stance and lifted my head to stare into the still, reflective surface of the water. I looked again at the young, dark-haired, grey-eyed man in the reflection and watched his brow furrow in certainty.

"This is me, now. No matter who, or what I was before, this is who I will be from now on. I am Nazaqi Hayle." As I settled into my skin again, I also felt the fatigue that remained from lack of consistent rest, and contemplated the deep basin before my eyes. The water was cold, or so my fingertips informed me, and washing my face in it would likely provide the shock I needed to shed the last remnants of spiderweb-like weariness that clung to my body. So I dipped my hands into the cold water and committed to it.

I washed my face in the cold water, shivering in reaction, then decided that was not nearly enough to shake the fog from my brain and instead took a deep breath and sank my whole head into the basin, stifling a scream of shock as the chill penetrated my skin and started an ache in my teeth before pulling myself up and shaking the water from my hair and wiping it from my eyes.

With that bit of self inflicted masochism completed, I dried myself off as much as I could with the tunic I had been wearing and returned to the main room. I had a need to plan my next steps. I wanted to return to the previous refuge and retrieve the dagger and flask. Even though I was surrounded by enough supplies, armor, weapons and clothing to support, or should I find some kind of market once I reached the surface, I could fund months of traveling by selling what I could not use.

I still felt that those two items were of much higher value than anything I had as yet touched in this single room. My mental map of this level of the lich's domain was becoming clearer by increments. Perhaps it was the frequency or detail of the dreams I had been having that had provoked better understanding of the lich's knowledge and memories, or perhaps it was simply a case of elimination.

I had found the path to the farms, but they had been blocked. In my wandering path of escape, I had noted several markings telling me that I had crossed much of this level nearly straight across, bypassing a large section simply because the source of the goblins' howls and hunting cries had originated from those corridors. In my mind I traced a general picture of my travels from the hidden door from which I had emerged onto this level, arbitrarily orienting it to the Southern most position. From there I had traveled vaguely North and East after fighting my first rat, and continued on in that direction until I found the room sealed by the stone door. From there I moved vaguely West and had my encounter with the two rats. Then I returned to that point and passed beyond in my search for the farms, or anything remaining of it. As I envisioned my wandering paths, I cooked the remaining leftovers, and was surprised as my mental map suggested that there might be an alternate path back to my first refuge.

Though I had not reached the farms, I surmised that they had been taken over by the goblins, and they had pursued me in a northeasterly direction. All I had to do was find those paths which led south, and I would eventually cross one of the paths nearby if I did not return directly to it.

I hastily shoveled my food into me, and wiped my mouth with the same tunic that I had dried with earlier, then I went to the armoire determined to find something much better suited to the journey as well as something that would be at least marginally comfortable under the leather armor on the rack. What I found brought a smile to my face. It would work perfectly, though the combination would likely turn some people apoplectic with how I was using it.

I laughed at the overall look when it was all on. I had not found anything resembling a gambeson to go under the armor and prevent chaffing. So the two robes and the pants that resembled hakama would have to do. I also pulled on the thick comfortable stockings with the split toe that were made to be worn with the battle sandals. With the leather and darkened steel armor secured over the robes and hakama, I looked like an amalgamation of a Japanese Samurai and a German pike soldier from the late 15th century. Only one thing was needed. Something to carry the flask and dagger.

I found it laying on one of the chests, and though it seemed almost benign, or downright average in appearance, the moment I set my hand on the medium sized leather bag I felt an indescribable lurch as I felt a drain on my mana and on some part of my very self. I pulled my hand back, but even as I did, I realized what had happened. This bag had once belonged to the lich, decades before he had given himself over to the curse of undeath, this bag had been one of his most treasured items.

Crafted by masters of their arts, it could hold the entire contents of this room and much more, but at some point between the last time he had used it and now, it had been emptied of its contents. Those contents had been distributed, destroyed or mislaid and forgotten in the passing decades and distances. Still, somehow there remained a link between the essence of who the lich had been, what he had filtered into me while I had been held prisoner in the amber sarcophagus, and the bag had latched onto that link.

It had been crafted for him, it had belonged to the man who became the lich, and now it belonged to me.

Overcoming my hesitancy, I reached out and took hold of the bag, lifting it up and inspecting it in the light of the mana crystals. The leather was aged, and looked somewhat stained in places, but perhaps that was more by intent than by accident. It had two durable straps designed to hang the bag between the shoulders like a pack. The flap that covered the opening had two straps that could be buckled closed, and a draw-string mouth that cinched shut with a pull. Just inside the opening the bag was divided in two parts. The front was a simple pocket, designed to hold anything small enough to fit within the mundane dimensions of the pack. The back of the divide was where the actual purpose of the bag lay, and as I slipped my hand inside, I felt the connection solidify and a curious sense of what I would find within had anything been placed there already. The sensation was slightly disturbing though, as it felt like I had passed my hand through some kind of static electricity, it tingled and prickled my skin in an unnerving manner, but I knew that this was harmless to me. Anyone else not connected to me in some way that placed their hand within this pocket would feel nothing but the inner layer of leather, and nothing would be revealed to them at all.

My lips quivered into a smile, then I broke into a laugh as I remembered so many nights around a table filled with friends, always seeking out such a wonder. "I've got a magic bag!"

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0.6: Legacy of Bones.

Clothed, armed, armored and supplied with food and a skin of water, on the off chance that I could not make it back to this hidden cell again before I needed rest or refuge, I braced myself and opened the door. I had dimmed the earth-crystal lamps and held my naginata at the ready in both gloved hands. When I opened the door, I was prepared for the eventuality that the goblins had left some of their hunters in the area just in case I returned, but only silence and stillness greeted me from beyond the stone door. Dipping my head out once and glancing both ways before pulling back, I released the pent up tension and stepped out into the square of dimly lit stone, then reached up and back to trickle mana into the nub of crystal that protruded from the lintel and closed my eyes to prepare them for the long exposure of ever present darkness that held sway over the rest of the catacombs.

With the soft thud and scrape of the stone door settling into place, I turned back to look at the wall. Nothing remained to show where the door was, other than the one tiny blemish where the earth-mana crystal stuck out of the wall. This one stretch of hallway was, in some ways, distinct from the many that I had so far traveled. Most of the grand halls, work places and passageways had been shaped with murals, and carved effigies to the lich's eminent power. But this one lay bare and untouched, as though signaling by its very unremarkable appearance that nothing of import could possibly be found. It was an interesting way of thinking, but it posed a bit of a problem for me. Without any kind of marking, I could end up spending precious time searching for this one single indicator of where the door was, and if that time happened to be under pressure, I might find myself in dire trouble.

I considered my options, and then looked down at the floor. Nowhere in my search for food or safety had I found any markings on the floor, so the answer became rather simple. I crouched down and closed my eyes as I placed my hand on the stone and called up an image of Stenja, the rune for Earth, and formed the image in my mind that I wished to create on the floor. Just a simple rune that could be mistaken for the eccentricities of stone, a lightening of the color and an infusion of mana to tint it ever so slightly for those who could see in the spectrum.

Then I released the spell and let it complete the work. Nodding my satisfaction, I rose up and glanced left and right before turning to my left and moving south into the unknown and away from the goblins.

I found there to be some minor problems in wearing a helmet while attempting to stealth one's way through a dungeon. The problem was in how one's senses were limited, both eyesight and hearing. Without a helmet, a person's range of vision is around one hundred and ninety degrees even with the visor up. While wearing a helmet, that can be reduced to around one hundred and seventy degrees, or less depending on the helmet. With the visor down and ready for battle, I was given only a strip of visibility through which I had to interpret the rest. So, I kept the visor and bevor up and locked to give me the best visibility until I needed the protection.

The other problem was sound. Not much can penetrate both the steel of the helmet and the padding required to keep the whole thing comfortable. The combination tends to muffle or deaden senses that can be crucial while creeping around in the dark.

So, although I was far better armored and prepared for any of the creepy-crawlies, furry-creepers or green-skinned lurkers, I was still moving far slower than I had previously. I moved Southward through the passageways, checking in both directions at every junction and occasionally glancing back to make sure I had not left a trail of some kind. I could not help leaving a scent trail, and if any goblin stumbled across such, I wanted to be far enough ahead that I had a chance of being alerted before they reached me. One, slow passing hour later I felt like I was not making nearly enough progress toward my goal, but then I encountered a new problem. The passage I had meant to take was blocked almost to the ceiling with chunks of stone and what looked like table and chair legs.

I back-tracked a bit and looked into several of the cells and rooms that I had passed on my way, and sure enough, any and all furnishings had been gathered and used to create a blockade.

I thought, briefly, of returning to the previous junction and taking a different route, but I found I was also curious. I climbed up the tumble of stones and furniture to find a location that would let me see through to the other side, and found nothing more than the continuation of the same hallway that I was in. No eldritch horrors. No rippling bogs of slime or other obvious hazards, and nothing so enormous that the piled up refuse would have been only a petty distraction. I did find, however, that whoever had made the blockade had put a good deal of effort into securing the top layers in place, interlocking the table legs and wedging stone into gaps where the chairs and tables could have been wiggled free. So I made the choice to use the bulldozer method, and pressed my hand to the ceiling as I channeled the mana I thought I would need to make a large enough crawl space for me to pass. But by the time I actually managed to move, shift and shape enough stone to allow me to crawl through the gap, I was exhausted and more than a little dizzy from over use of my own mana.

After a long rest, I felt steady enough to continue. This section of passages felt different, and I confirmed it when I passed by a cell with the rotting remains of wooden furniture, blankets and personal effects still inside. It made me more than a little curious, but not so curious that I bothered to delay my objective. I should have been a bit more observant, and maybe had I been a little more paranoid about the differences, I would have been alert enough not to have let them get behind me.

I had passed numerous cells and passageways on my way, but after days of looking in on every cell and finding them silent, unoccupied and completely empty, I made a bad assumption.

The only warning I had to the latest threat was the clatter and scrape as the sound of movement penetrated my helmet and turned me around to see the first shuffling steps of a skeleton emerging from a cell that I had passed only a minute before.

Death naturally holds a certain level of fear for any living creature, sentient or otherwise. Undeath, and the embodiment of this unnatural state carries yet another layer of terror, so I can't blame myself too much for freezing at the sight of the ambulating bones and the slow turning of its empty eye sockets in my direction to regard me. Perhaps it was a bit of an overreaction on my part when I finally shook myself free of the paralysis, but my right hand came up and the magic seemed to flow without my conscious thought. I saw the rune and the rings of formulae spinning around it, then the stone dust, pebbles and glittering chips of stone gathered before my hand, concentrating and solidifying into a spinning sphere that crossed the ten meters between myself and the advancing skeleton in less than a second and passed through, shattering ribs and sending splinters of bone fragments dancing down the length of the hall behind it.

The skeleton tilted its head down, looking at the empty space where almost a third of its structure was missing, then it looked at me and opened its fleshless jaw in a silent scream. Something in me shook and quivered and I backed away one step and then again as it lurched into motion again, its feet bringing it closer with perceptibly more speed this time. I blew out a breath and concentrated, feeling the mana gather as the spell formed and then another stone sphere shot down the length of the hall. This time when it struck, it was where any dungeon crawler knew to hit. The skull shattered into a hundred shards, the fragments bouncing and ricocheting off of the wall next to it and all around the floor behind it. The rest of the skeleton teetered for a moment as though struggling to retain cohesion, and then suddenly lost the fight and fell clattering loudly into a spreading pile of truly lifeless bones.

Sound is a strange thing. A whale's song can be heard for hundreds of miles in certain conditions. In the silence of underground caverns, the clicking of bats sonar can be heard from several caverns away. The echoes of clattering bones filling the hall, and bouncing cleanly from smooth hard stone walls and floors was as much of a clarion call as though I had taken a hammer to a bronze bell. Suddenly there were sounds of scratching, scraping and clattering from almost every room in every direction, and the chill that I had felt on first seeing the skeleton walking was dwarfed by the panic of realization that I felt in that moment.

"Fuck. That's why the hall was blocked off!"

My feet turned and I started jogging southward, both of my hands gripping the naginata and holding it across my body as I traveled down the center of the hallway. I couldn't take the chance of being too close to either side when passing any of the open archways and suddenly getting caught on the sharp claws of one of those fleshless abominations.

Very few people ever experience the joy of running in full armor. The weight of metal, leather and padding that stifles movement while adding to the clatter of sound, and becoming an ever heavier burden as your endurance starts to drain incrementally, can only be described in vulgar terms and tones of voice. Tape on the dread of being engaged in a battle with things that should be long dead, and you might discover a sense of urgency to your efforts regardless of how tired you might be.

I passed several cells with broken doors, or simple arch ways where doors had once stood, and only occasionally caught a hint of movement within. But I was not about to slow down enough to verify my growing paranoid suspicion that the number of skeletons that I thought were emerging to investigate the sound of one of their fellows being destroyed. Ahead of me, the hallway split and I had to make a fast decision as the sounds of scraping movement behind me grew. I dipped to the left and kept going, only to curse as I watched the sickly green-grey form of a skeleton rise from its slumped position against a wall ahead. I put on just a little more speed, timing my steps and the swing of my blade to coincide with its rise, and brought the blade across in an arch that separated the skull from its shoulders. The clatter of bones returning to their inert nature was satisfying, but my hands tingled slightly from the impact. That satisfaction only lasted until I emerged from the hallway and found myself in a large chamber with several branching passages on the far side. I had an excess of choices, but one major problem between myself and them. The hall was strewn with broken pillars, the walls scorched and pitted and resembling those rooms closest to the site of the lich's final defeat.

The heroes must have passed through this room and given battle. Arrayed between and among the fallen pillars were more skeletons, and I found myself the new center of their collective attention. The stone columns that lay in long chunks and, in places shattered piles, had been carved almost four feet thick, so they now provided barriers to keep the skeletons from coming at me in a mass. But they also made the floor between myself and the passageways on the far side of the room a maze of hazards.

I glanced behind me and watched as one skeleton stepped out of a cell to join the dozen that I had left behind me along the way. If I turned and fought the ones behind, I would simply be caught by those in the room. If I stood my ground where I was, I would be smashed between the two groups, so I gathered my nerve and dashed to my right, using the majority of the fallen columns and piles of stone to channel the numbers into a manageable flow. I cut one down as it attempted to crawl over a pile, and kept moving, using the pommel of my naginata on the skull of another as it stepped around the end of a broken pillar and leaving another pile of inert bones in my wake.

I noticed that there was a pillar leaning into the corner of the room and briefly debated the wisdom of using it as a bit of high ground from which to fight, but abandoned it when I considered the numbers and how hard I was already breathing. Exhaustion might well take me down in the end if I did not do this right. Instead, I cut across the corner, vaulting over a pillar and kicking one hopeful bone rack in the teeth, sending it careening into another of its fellows and leaving them both in a tangle as I jogged across the temporarily open space.

The skeletons were moderately slow moving, and one on one, I felt like they weren't all that much of a threat so long as I was aware of them being present. But then I didn't know how hard they could hit until one stepped around the base of a shattered pillar and caught me with a strike to my left shoulder pauldron that spun me almost entirely around and nearly caused me to lose my balance. I back-stepped rapidly to give myself room.

Along with the ache of the impact, my shoulder felt cold as though I had draped a cold wet cloth over it. I glanced at my blackened pauldron and my eyes widened as I caught sight of frost crystals forming and then suddenly fading as warmth returned. My threat assessment had now upgraded skeletons to a serious threat. I looked back at the skeleton that had hit me as it lurched in my direction and brought my right hand up, a stone bullet formed before my hand and blasted the leering skull into fragments, but it had cost me time and given the rest of the skeletons an opportunity to cut off my projected path.

To my left the trailing skeletons had filled in the gaps that I had left behind, ahead of me more of them in small groups of two or three either made their plodding way around the remains of fallen pillars or crawled over them. To my right a group of five skeletons blocked my advance toward my hoped for escape. Five being less than the rest, I rolled my left shoulder and dredged up some determination. I hesitated as the crowd of undead gathered closer, merging into a thicket of bones outlined in a sickly green-grey light of corrupted mana.

One solid strike from any of them and I would be weakened, more than that and I might not ever see the light of the sun again. A sudden rage roared to life within me and I opened my mouth, drawing in air as I firmed my stance and raised my weapon high over my right shoulder. Formulae and runes coalesced in my mind's eye as I pulled hard at the mana from my surroundings and instinctively channeled it into the naginata, from pommel to the tip of the blade and it seemed to catch alight with the intensity of the concentrated magic. The crowd of undead lurched closer collectively as though sensing that their prey had nowhere to go, and that they could rend the offending stink of life from its fragile flesh.

Then I took one step, and let my rage flow down the length of the naginata as it swept down and across at chest level, the suddenly blinding flash of magic swept outward as the air condensed into an arch of force and blasted outward from me as the central origin. The condensed air formed a blade as sharp as a cleaver, as dense as stone and as fast as a falcon. Bones shattered into dust in its path, the pillar that I had recently moved around cracked and the top foot bounced up into the air before tumbling down again and crushing another skeleton under its unforgiving weight. The dense blade of magically imbued air dissipated before it reached the far wall, but the devastation left in its path left me stunned. Stunned and feeling suddenly weak and wobbling on my feet as I stumbled to one side and found support in leaning against a fallen pillar to my right.

All around me, those skeletons who had been standing now lay scattered about the floor, skulls rolling to a stop and rib bones rocking back and forth on the curve until they tilted over and fell flat on the ground. Three of the undead had managed, by chance to evade the destruction, either by luck of having tripped or having fallen from their perch on a pillar just before the wave scythed over and past them. Through my blurred vision I caught their movement, determined still to pull the life from me and either crawling or shuffling inexorably toward me with plodding steps.

I shook my head, both in amazement and to clear the fog from my vision and moved to my right away from them.

I had to get some space between us and to do my best to recover from that idiotic expenditure of mana. Maritu had been right. I could easily kill myself from pure stupidity if I didn't learn better control of my magic.

For whatever reason, be it chance, fate or something else, the path that I needed most to be clear of enemies was empty, and I urged my shaking legs to give me just a little more as I stumbled and shuffled down the hallway, pursued in slow motion by the lich king's last remaining servants.

Rest was a thing denied, and like all temptations that are denied, the craving for it grew with every plodding step and breath. There was a kind of agonizing relief in finding the first sign that I was nearing my destination. It came with the realization that there was little in the way of safe places to hide and that even in the most silent of these deep halls, the threat of life or death struggle was never a non-existent factor.

A centipede had found the carcass of the first rat that I had killed, and was busy chewing its way into the belly of the dog sized rodent as I turned the corner and stopped in my tracks. The rearmost legs of the centipede waved back and forth as it continued eating, and I measured the distance between it and the farthest wall, trying to gauge if there was enough room to simply pass it by and let it be. But its senses for life and instincts for survival must have been highly attuned to its surroundings, because it froze for a moment and then its whole body coiled up around its prize while its head pulled clear of the decaying intestines and soured flesh. Had I any other choice, I would have left the thing alone, but the path I most needed to take was there, on the other side of the scene that I had interrupted.

I cursed and brought my weapon to the ready. My legs had slowly regained their strength and stability while I had stumbled and jogged my way south toward my goal. I could feel the mana flowing into me as I regained some measure of endurance from it, but I was far from being at my best. I took a breath and lifted my lead foot, stepping closer and watched the head and antennae orient on me, sensing the vibrations of my passage, or perhaps feeling the movement of the air that I displaced. Its forelegs twitched and curled reflexively as it tasted the air and waited, and I took another step closer.

I needed just one more step to be in range, but the centipede was not inclined to wait. In a rush, the creature flowed over the rat's carcass and onto the stone floor between us, moving in a snake-like curving pattern, left and right, as it closed the distance. I lowered the point of the blade, lifting the heel of my right foot and lunged forward, severing three of its leading legs and sending the creature curling back with a hiss of pain. I too retreated, but only half step before side-stepping to my right, trying to edge toward a larger gap in the eight foot wide hall.

Ichor and venom dripped from the centipede as it gathered its rear most segments tightly against where it held its head steady, but I had seen that move before in the prelude to a vipers strike, so I struck first, jabbing twice at its head and then slamming the blade of my naginata down onto its back. What I had not seen was the lashing use of its tail to fend off enemies and the bruising impact that tossed me against the wall to my right was one lesson I needed to remember. I backed away as it thrashed and curled and then uprighted itself, hissing louder and bleeding more from yet another severed leg and a running crack in one of its body segments.

I managed to keep the point of my nagi directed at it as I shuffled along the wall, slowly gaining ground on my destination while also creating distance between the centipede and myself. It was a little ironic that one of the last of my pursuers chose that time to catch up to me, clatter-stepping down the hall and falling on the already wounded centipede as the nearest unguarded source of hated life. The reaction was just as fast, the pinchers and chitinous claws of dozens of legs battered and dug into the thing that had gotten ahold of it and was tearing into it with dulled yellow teeth. The skeleton in the meantime was losing small bones here and there, and the shattering of one of its legs mattered not at all as it followed its first and foremost objective; to kill.

And so, while the two combatants bit and clawed, smashed and struggled, their mutual enemy crept further down the hall, glancing over my shoulder and wishing them both luck in their struggle for mutual destruction.

The one thing that I had not managed to procure among the trove of supplies was the one thing that I reveled in once I had secured the refuge, and dove upon the flask that I had left behind. I chugged from the full flask of water like a man lost in the deserts of the Sahara as I collapsed to my knees and gasped. I had had time for neither rest nor food since I dug my way through the barrier and into the territory of the undead.

Finding a clear path out and toward the south had been a stroke of luck, as the ever present and relentless pursuit by the undead had driven me to the point of attempting several instances of hit and run attacks, just to buy myself time to pick the right passageway to my destination. Once, I had even caught sight of a collapse further on just as I was about to commit to the path, and had thus saved myself from being trapped by a group of skeletons in a dead end. Some time back, when the goblins had done what they had to contain the undead, they had stopped too soon and left open the paths to the south from which I had blindly emerged into their hunting grounds.

The remaining presence of the rat carcass did show one thing, they had never ventured south for some reason. But I was not going to be in the area long enough to know what that reason might be. Only long enough to eat some of the rations that I had brought along with me, and to get enough sleep to recover my mana and strength, and then I would return to the trove of supplies.

From there.. From there I would have to commit to the fight, or find some other way of luring the undead away from the stairwell that I knew must lay within their domain.

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0.7: Gambit and Labyrinth.

More disturbing dreams awoke me in the middle of the night, Dreams that I emerged from, sitting upright in a cold sweat and on the verge of letting loose a scream of frustrated fear and disgust. Those dreams did not cling to me as they had before, as though moving further away from the lich's calcified remains was loosening his hold on my sleeping mind.

However, the stone slab bed was just as warm and cuddle-worthy as I had remembered. Yet rest was rest however little, and it was sorely needed. It also meant waking, and that was something that I was gaining appreciation for every time it happened. I had little else to do while chewing on rough bread and meat, and chasing it down with cool water, than to consider my options for escape from this level.

If the grand hall where I had almost killed myself was any indication, there was a possibility that more of the undead would be around the base of the stairwell. More than one such confrontation would likely end badly, particularly if it was back to back. Yet, I had a sense that I had grown in strength, or possibly just wizened up to how to use the mana I had access to a little more efficiently.

As I thought back to how I had called forth that single wide area wind-blade, I realized how stupid I had been. I had pulled too much from my own reserves and not nearly enough from the mana around me.

Sighing, I tucked the last of the food back into the bag and tucked the flask in with it. The dagger that I had also retrieved, I slipped into the back of my belt as a last ditch weapon. I did perform one small act of pillaging before I left. Of the six sconces holding the earth-mana crystals, I left only one crystal remaining as I sealed the door behind me when I left the refuge, determined that if anyone should find it after I had left, it would be better that it not be inhabited.

Considering the way the skeleton had attacked the centipede the day before, I found no question about why the goblins had put so much effort into piling up every chunk of stone they could find loose and available. Retracing my path to the North West of the sanctuary took a bit more time than it had previously. My aim, this time was not the farms, but simply to skirt the edges of both territories. This proved a touch more difficult than I had hoped. I had grown used to, and even comfortable in, my armor such that moving quietly felt like it took less effort and time. The hitch in the plan was the level of alertness that the goblins had assumed after the loss of three hunters. I could have simply attacked the patrols that I crossed paths with, but I felt that letting them pass by without raising the alarm would give me more time to grasp my available options and what I had to work with.

Several times I had to double back because of the blockades the goblins had created prevented me from proceeding in my intended direction. I could have been frustrated, and I was to a small degree, but with every example and each observation of their patrols and habits, something of a plan began to form. That plan became more solid as I felt I was getting closer to the hallway where the hidden room awaited. The hidden room must have been at the extent of the goblins' claimed and regularly patrolled hunting grounds, but the other thing that was in the vicinity was a pile of stones that was less secure, and looked far less stable than any of the others that had turned me around in my tracks. I marked this blockage on my mental map, and returned to the nearest intersection to work my way around it.

The undecorated and nearly unmarked hallway was empty, and slipping back through the door held a fleeting sense of coming home. I stripped down and cleaned the leather while a prepared stew simmered in a pot. Then after I had eaten, I indulged in a bath to soak the tension out of my muscles while I spent some time imagining and eliminating the ways that I could manage to bring the plan to fruition.

The morning after my return came with a pleasant discovery. Among the jars and boxes left in the kitchenette, I found a box of dried spices that had an appealing and vaguely familiar scent. It certainly wasn't coffee as I remembered it, but the tea was indeed a fine substitute and brought a feeling of comfort. I spent the morning, and the remainder of the day going through the rest of the hoard. In truth, there was much, and also very little.

Whoever had decided on what to store for the personal guard of the lich, must have had a strange sense of what was most highly valued and needed. Probably the least useful among them also happened to be the most provided. Tomes and scrolls and a seemingly endless supply of what I determined to be velum, but more than likely had not originated from sheep or cattle of the conventional sort. More than a few of the tomes and scrolls left me with the urge to wipe my hands clean, just from the touch of them. I know what they were, and some lingering part of me screamed in agony because it knew the sacrilege I intended. Those priceless and irreplaceable treasures I happily relocated to the stove and enjoyed the warmth they provided.

Having sufficiently reduced the bulk of disgusting reading, I emptied the armor and weapon stands into the bag, checking now and then to see if I had reached its capacity. There followed a chuckling spree of simply grabbing and stuffing, clothing, small chests of gold, silver, copper and bronze, Iron and steel coins as well as some made of wood or bone and carved with silhouettes or images and writing that I did not bother to read.

Spice jars, grain sacks, flour sacks, salt bags, bottles of oil, wine, and some kind of mushroom beer that I contemplated tossing into the oven in spite of the risk of putting out the fire.

"eh, some thirsty sod-sucker with no tastebuds will probably want to give it a try." I thought to myself, and in it went. I hefted the bag, noticing that it felt just as heavy as when it was empty, so I continued with the pots and pans and kitchen knives.

I knew that I would end up selling or trading most of this away at some point, but I simply refused to leave it in this forsaken hole to rot. That thought made me realize that I was not planning to return, and I looked around the room at everything that could possibly fit into the bag, and what could not. I looked at the five beds, and shook my head. The furnishings would simply have to be subjected to the tender mercies of time and decay. The blankets though..

I left one bed made for my use while I was putting my plan into action. I might need to rest at times. The soaps and bath oils went in the bag, and I left only enough food supplies for a few days. I was a little sad at what I would be leaving behind, I knew that I could not take everything but I made a rather passable impression of an over-caffeinated, manic loot-goblin none the less..

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My first foray into the maze for the purpose of sabotage ran into a hitch within thirty minutes of leaving the hidden room. A goblin patrol of five had just emerged from a crossing hall, with the intention of continuing when I ducked into a cell for cover. I am not sure which was more surprised at discovering unexpected and unwelcome company, the rat or myself. In either case, several quick jabs of my naginata encouraged the rat to make a run for it. Unfortunately for the rat, it chose the direction of the hunting party.

The excited call of a goblin had the rat scurrying back in the direction that it had come from and flashing past the open doorway of the cell I was hiding in. I tucked myself into the corner by the door and waited for five sets of bare, clawed feet to pass before leaning out and moving quietly in pursuit. I had to sympathize with the unfortunate quarry of the goblins, nothing motivates like being addressed as lunch.

The goblin hunters never even considered that they might be followed, and the racket of eager grunts and squeals from the goblins gave cover to the sound of my own footfalls as I slowly gained ground on them

An excited cry came from the lead hunters as they managed to corner their target, but those cries turned to shrieks of terror as my blade took the trailing goblin from behind, the blade of my nagi cutting cleanly through its scrawny neck and sending the ragged eared head leaping past one of its companions. In the ensuing melee, the rat escaped and fled hurriedly into the dark and away from the madness. The clash of steel on stone and wood, the gasping and gurgling whimpers of pain and fear filled the small room into which the rat had been chased and cornered, and there its hunters died. I left the bodies where they lay, and pressed on. It was time to cause some havoc and confusion before I let the gates crash down on the final touch.

I spent what I felt must have been an hour and a half weakening the structure of the pile, hollowing out supports, pushing aside blocks and leaving only the thinnest of defenses on the goblins' side of the barricade. I also left enough room for me to quickly wiggle through from one side to the other, though I made sure that it was obscured to casual inspection from the green side of the divider. If anything, I had managed to do one of two things. I had either tapped into a deeper reserve of mana, or I had developed a fine touch on how I used what I had available. In either case, I did not feel nearly as tired or dizzy as I had the first time I passed over a barricade into the dead zone.

This time I had stamina left to start exploring, seeking out the other half of my plan and starting the gathering part of my plan to create an avalanche. I found three rooms with skeletons in several poses. Some standing, some laying still on the ground and others that sat against the wall as though resting. These rooms I merely took note of, and crept away silently enough to let the dead lay.

Two days later, I was running and laughing to myself as I jigged and dodged around the mass of skeletons that trailed me and crawled out of their resting places attempting to intercept me. As I ran from one room to the next, making no effort at all to be silent or hide my presence, I thought back to my accidental discovery the day before; I had encountered another hunting group on their homeward journey, and trailed after them.

They led me to one room that, though large, was nearly as plain and disinteresting as so many others in the lich's catacombs. But then the five hunters circled a large tumble of piled stones, and never came out. It was, to my best guess, the closest I had ever gotten to where I knew the underground farms lay. This confirmed my suspicion and I added this important information to my plan for clearing my path of escape.

Now, I led a shambling mass of undead down the corridors on a winding path past the broken open barricade, through the meandering halls that comprised the hunting grounds of the goblins and right into their front door. The expressions on the faces of four goblin door guards was something I would remember for days. Shock became rage, rage became terror, and then they fled screaming down the concealed hallway that opened out into the fields of mushrooms and more than a dozen tents of various sizes.

I broke to my right, and followed the wall for a bit, then ducked out into the forest of chest high mushrooms. The rumble of clattering boney feet that followed me broke out into the open and spread out in all directions, screams and roared commands preceded the clash of wood and stone against bone, and the battle of the farms ensued.

I, on the other hand, kept myself to cover, waiting for the flood of skeletons to become a trickle, and then when the fracas was in full tilt behind me, I loped down the path from whence I had come and penetrated even deeper into the dead zone seeking what I knew would be there.

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0.7: Laying Dreams to Rest.

Once again, it was the arch of a doorway, lined with the earth-mana crystals that heralded the next leg of my journey. A long spiraling stairwell as broad as the halls that I had left behind. The sameness of these stairs was occasionally broken by yet another arch, but I had neither interest or inclination to disturb the doors presented and delve into what lay concealed by them. I spent two uncomfortable nights on those stairs, trying my best to find a position that did not leave the hard edge of a stone step digging into either my hip, back or shoulder. Even with the added padding of blankets, it was not the most restful sleep I had ever had. Still, I felt like my dreams were a little less intense than they had been in nights past. At least today I wasn't filled with the urge to drink something of dubious quality in a lame attempt to drown the lingering images from my mind.

After I had closed the door on the level where the skeletons and goblins had dwelled, I had met with no encounters more difficult or interesting than attempting to prepare and eat food on a stairwell. It had begun to feel like an ever repeating cycle of climbing the same set of stairs again and again. That thought, or the second time that thought had occurred to me, was interrupted by the realization that the stairwell had ceased to exist at the foot of a wall of broken stone and loose dirt. I stared at the tumble, first in dismay at having to climb down again and then with some undefinable hope.

"Why would a cave-in of stones and dirt spark such a thing as hope?" I wondered, until I realized that it was the soil, dark and full of life, rich soil that could hold and nourish vegetation. That held a meaning that only slowly dawned on me.

"The surface.. I must be close to the surface if the soil looks like that. I could.. I could shape my way out, couldn't I? I could just.. Use all of my mana, shove my way out of here. Even if it took a day, five days, twelve.." I took a deep breath, holding it as I forced my mind to calm using one of Maridu's meditation techniques. I closed my eyes and schooled my breathing, taking deep slow breaths and gathering calm within. I drew on the mana around me, and some from within and placed my hand on the stone nearest me as I called the earth-magic rune to mind then layered on additional runes until it became a sigil.

When I released the mana that I had built up, it pulsed outward from where I stood, flowing through stone and soil leaving an image in my mind of where it had passed.

The result was.. Not encouraging. Yes. I could follow that path. I could burn myself out in a desperate climb, chancing a collapse every step of the way because the collection of loose soil and heavy stone was unstable for as far as I could 'see'. But there was another way, and I just had to be patient a while longer.

With that thought on my mind, I turned and scrambled down again, almost tripping myself in my eagerness until I got a handle on my emotions and slowed down to a manageable speed of descent. If I was near enough to the surface for roots to show up, then I had a chance to find an exit. I just had to go down one level and find another set of stairs, or any one of the places where the structure of the lich kings halls broke the surface.

Minutes later, I skidded to a stop at the last door on the stairwell, and brought my shaking hand up, almost touching the crystal before I held back and gave myself a moment to think clearly. Much like before when I escaped the lich's laboratory, I had no idea what might be on the other side. Freedom, or danger, and it would be best to be prepared for both. I unsheathed the blade of the naginata, leaving the sheath in the belt sash, and stepped to one side nearest the crystal.

Only then, when I was prepared for fight or flight did I let a trickle of my mana seep into the stone. For some reason, it took longer and more mana for the door to begin opening. It did so only reluctantly, the stone grinding and scraping as it slid ponderously to one side. The air that rushed in, mixing with the still dry air of the stairwell was damp, and smelled of rot and a mix of other things that I could not immediately place.

Slowly I leaned out, keeping my eyes open for any movement, and my ears open for any sound. I had left the helmet in the bag along with the armor. I realized that it had been a foolish thing to open the door without that protection, but done was done and I would have to adapt and go forward. Back was not an option.

The walls of the room that the door opened into were mostly the same as those further below. But where the stone was cool, clean and smooth in the depths, here it was chipped, cracked, broken and leaking soil into the corners of the room. Around the room the floor was much rougher and covered in a thick layer of dirt. But that dirt was a small blessing, because it showed no clear signs of feet having tread within. At least none of humanoid variety, and none at all for some time. I glanced up, having learned from my encounter with the centipede, and found nothing to be concerned with.

Holding my sword with both hands in a relaxed grip, I stepped into the room and crossed to the arching doorway. This one, as a blessing, had no door and led directly into a hallway that led left and right. Nothing promoted either direction over the other in any clear way, so I paused to consider the cave-in at the top of the stairwell. How many turns was it? Four? Five? Which direction had I been facing? I shook my head and stepped out into the hallway, turning right and committing myself to simply following one wall consistently until I found the way up or the way out.

The thick soles of my sandals ground small stones into the floor beneath the layer of accumulated dirt, causing me to hesitate in my steps from time to time until I regained my ability to walk smoothly and quietly, watching my footing and plotting my steps along the way. As there had been below, the halls were lined with cells for servants, rooms for workers and crafting and halls for eating or barracks for sleeping. None were overly large on their own, and they were separated by long gaps between that described thick walls to support the stone above and keep it from collapsing downward and killing or trapping the lich's labor force.

There was one difference that took me some time to puzzle out. From time to time, I would pause, frozen still in my tracks in the belief that I had heard something in the distance. But then the silence returned and after a minute of being on edge, I would lift a foot and continue on. There was also the difference in the smell of the air. It held a cold moisture that was so different to the cold dry mustiness I had gotten used to. And the movement of the air set the hairs on the back of my neck on end. It was, in the end, the realization that the air was moving that had me pause and look around myself more carefully.

The floor showed nothing of particular interest, the walls were still grungy and occasionally marked with soot in places. The ceiling though held a change from anything I had seen except in cells made for the highest servants, and the store room that had been sealed by magic. All along the hallway, and in places around the perimeter of the hall I stood in, the ceiling had holes that led upward into the dark. It was from these holes that the moving air came, and I realized that they were vents bringing in fresh air from the surface.

Staring up at the hole leading up to the surface and daylight, then I closed my eyes and I felt a tear slide down my cheek. Hope can be a painful thing.

I opened my eyes and took in the shape of the room again, then I took a breath and continued as I had been, keeping the wall to my right shoulder. In places the floor had buckled and cracked, leaving the gaps filled with dirt, or collecting moisture that slowly drained into the walls to disappear beyond sight. The rooms continued to be much the same, but for clumps of dirt, or tumbles of stone that had fallen from the ceiling. After an hour of following the path, turning right with every branch and keeping to the rightward wall, I came to a doorway where I paused, holding my breath and waiting for movement. But the skeleton that lay curled on the floor gave no light of corrupted mana, made no move at all. I glanced further down the hallway, then back over my shoulder seeking any sign of other life, but none occurred and I turned into the room and stepped silently closer to the bones arrayed upon the floor.

The bones were heavy set, large and broad. The spine was curved as though whatever it was had a long tendency of hunching over. The skull had a heavy jaw bone with two broken protruding tusks that curved up and outward from the lower jaw. Overall, it looked similar to early homosapiens though closer to Neanderthal, but for the presence of those tusks.

The leg bones were short for its size, and the pelvis was shaped differently than those of the skeletons below. It was also quite clearly far fresher, as there remained some dried and stretched skin that clung to them in places. On the floor next to the skeleton, lay a cracked wooden club with chipped flint and a leather strap.

Disturbingly, there was also a woven leather belt from which a child sized skull was suspended. I looked down on this evidence that there were others who had found their way into these corridors, and sighed in a mix of frustration and determination. If this thing could find its way in, I could find my way out. With that thought I turned and left the room. I did not want to stay in this gods forsaken hole one day longer than I had to.

Shortly after leaving the room the halls stopped turning right, and instead began curving or turning sharply back in the direction that I had come. For hours I wandered, stepping softly and listening when the air moaned, then proceeding forward again when no danger made itself evident.

It was a change in the air that sent me scurrying for the cover of one of the empty rooms. It had, for some unknown reason, changed direction and brought with it the smell of smoke and musk, and the far off rumble of voices. I pressed my back to the wall next to the door, my sword held low and my eyes wide and seeking. But my ears detected no movement, and my altered sight observed no shifting shape or flow in the mana that permeated the walls around me or within the hall.

Hesitantly I peeled myself away from the wall and peeked around the corner. Still nothing moved, no sound of breath. There was something ahead of me, and if it was like the tusked creature in the room, I wanted nothing to do with them. The problem lay in that who or whatever they were, they may have control of the exit, and I would not allow anything to come between me and the light of day, no matter how much of their blood I had to spill. I closed my eyes and channeled mana into a spell, one which had no end except when I stopped feeding it mana. Then I opened my eyes again and continued slowly chasing the wind.

One step, and then the next, and the one after that. I passed through the halls, and moved past empty rooms as silent as I could be. Movement became a thing of instinct for me. I paused when the wind changed, or moaned. I felt my mana flowing through and within me, the body magic I had initiated humming at a low and constant frequency throughout every muscle, tendon and artery as I held the spell at the edge of my mind.

The scent of smoke brushed my senses again, clearer now, and accompanied by other scents. Stale sweat, urine and filth, rot and decay. Whatever these things were, they seemed determined to warn anything approaching by stink alone. There was something eerily familiar in the stink, something at the very edge of my mind that sparked a hatred and a need for violence that concerned me. I found my hands gripping my naginata hard and struggled to relax, but the tension simply flowed elsewhere within my body. The scent sparked words in my mind like 'vermin' and 'enemy', and I felt a subtle urge for vengeance flitter just beneath my awareness. I crouched down and began stalking that scent, watching the floor for tracks and glancing at the walls for markings or signs of passage. With a quiet sense of unease at my own drive, I stalked the halls and rooms of the underground labyrinth, seeking out an enemy that I had no conscious knowledge of.

As determined as I was, some hours later I found that I had somehow lost the scent. I had taken a turning branch along the right that led me away from the flow of air, and down a path of corridors and branching's that were untouched, or rarely tread by the creatures that I had scented and resolved to hunt. With the loss of the scent trail, my aggression slowly dissipated. I would take up the hunt again, but for the moment, I felt I needed to find a secure place to rest and prepare. In the maze of the upper warrens, I had seen no sign of hidden rooms, passages or even the signature stone doors.

But that did not mean that they were not present, and it was an oddity of perception that clued me in to something that was not quite correct. With one step, the wall to my left seemed solid and contiguous, smooth and without blemish. With the next step the mana that flowed through the stone all around and through everything seemed to ripple on that same wall. Stepping back, without moving my eyes or my head, I watched the change happen again. I turned my head to my left, and peered closer as I moved forward again.

There, a seam in the stone that was not the joining of blocks, nor a carved groove in the surface. I moved closer and brushed the stone with my fingertips, tracing the place where I had seen the ripple occur and felt the dissonance in the mana. Looking up and to both sides, I smiled as I caught the subtle line continuing in an outline framing a hidden panel.

I closed my eyes and let my mana seep into the stone, allowing my senses to 'feel' the outline and reveal the source of the disruption. Then I had it, a spell that blended the stone together to make it seem as though it were all still one piece. I reached with those tendrils of mana and took hold of the dissonance, much as I had the key of the preserving spell, and gave it a gentle tug, slowly unraveling it until it fell away entirely. The revealed stone door was small, though not so small that I could not pass through if I could open it. To other senses, it would seem to still be of a piece with the wall, but to me, it was almost laughably clear. All I had to do was find the trigger, and inevitably it had to be close.

I searched the wall for several feet in both directions, but found nothing. Then I walked the length again with my eyes turned upward, and still nothing. Then I turned around and faced the opposite wall, once again walking the same fifteen feet, slowly, step by step until I found the recess disguised as a sconce. The crystal had long since been removed, but I was not certain that it mattered. I brought my hand up, caressing the stone that had been shaped into a blossom of some kind, gently running my fingertips over one petal and then the next until I felt the one my fingertip brushed against move. I stepped to one side, and pulled gently at first, then with more determination until the petal gradually shifted. Somewhere within the wall a soft click sounded, and the disguised panel popped open just enough for me to wedge my fingers behind the lip and pull it slowly open.

I glanced behind me in the direction that I had come, then further along the hall. Seeing and hearing nothing other than my own excited breathing, I pulled the panel open and looked inside. The lintel was tall, and not meant for casual or constant use. But it was still low enough that I could step over it. On the other side, a small room held two small chests, and a withered carpet. I peered at the floor, the walls and the ledge around the opening with a thief's suspicious paranoia, but I found nothing beyond the obvious.

Once more I checked my surroundings, even holding my breath for a moment to make certain that I did not cloud out other sounds with my breathing, then I slowly released the breath and lifted my foot and slung it inside.

Once I had cleared the lintel, I reached back and grabbed the catch that had been carved into the panel and pulled it closed, smiling in satisfaction and I felt the lock click through my fingertips and know that I would have an exit when I needed it. I inverted my blade and sheathed it as I turned and looked around the room again. Someone, long ago had meant for this to be a safe place to hide his treasures. A place that they had meant to return to, but never had. I wondered for a moment if the individual had been among those who had been taken down by the heroes, or if in the pandemonium following the fall of their undead king, some well deserved misfortune had been brought to those who supported the one who sought to rule through corruption and death.

Whatever the case, there must be something worth tucking away and the effort of such clever use of magic to conceal it. With all due caution, I approached the chests, moving not directly across, but around the perimeter of the carpet. I was, perhaps, being overly cautious, but indulging in a healthy bit of paranoia was the key to reaching a ripe old age, and that was something I wanted very much to do.

Both chests were made of sturdy wood, bound in brass with the dark patina of age and handling on the metal. They sat side by side on the stone floor against the rear wall, just far enough from it to allow for the lids to be lifted and rest there while the previous owner placed or removed what he had hidden here. I stepped closer to the right hand chest and knelt down looking closer. Outwardly there was nothing to indicate any traps; No strings, or glint of sharp metal points, and nothing connecting them to the wall before which it sat. Still, I ran my gloved fingers along the rim of the lid seeking out any discernable blemish or incongruity that would indicate something nefarious. I found nothing of the sort, and wondered if the previous owner had thought that the illusion would suffice for the safety of his hidden hoard.

Placing my left hand on the lid, I reached behind me and pulled the long knife from its sheath and used it to test the gap between the lid and the chest. Still I found nothing, and decided that the only way to know for certain was to brace myself to move quickly and just open the chest. I still moved to one side as I lifted the lid, sighing in relief as nothing happened. The walls of the chest were made of dark wood, nearly an inch thick, and carved with care. The corners were joined almost perfectly with not one visible nail. It was a thing of absolute craftsmanship. Inside lay a leather bound ledger, and several small leather bags that bulged with coins of various metals. I lifted them out one by one and felt the heft of them.

Opening them, I found gold, silver and copper, all of various thickness and diameter with various art or markings on them. They were much like the coins that I had pilfered from the hidden storage on the goblin and skeleton level; All from various kingdoms and in different values. The sacks I deposited in my pack before opening them ledger.

At a glance, it read like a diary of someone who was responsible for keeping track of various patrols and raids. It reviewed dates and locations that meant little to me, and listed the supplies that had been expended and items that required repair or replacement. It also listed the differences between what had been reported to his liege, and what had been kept for themselves. I chuckled as I realized this was a classic case of double book-keeping, and someone skimming from the ill-gotten gains.

I closed the chest, and considered leaving it behind, but thought it may be of some use in the future. It was a bit on the heavy side, and even though I had doubts about the chest fitting through the opening, the pack seemed to expand enough to take the entire chest, leaving a clear place on the floor where it had sat.

The other chest was less interesting. It contained clothing suitable for a woman of short stature and broad frame. Skirts, dresses and blouses of decent quality, though nothing that was remarkable. In the end, it felt like a bit of a let down until I reached the bottom and uncovered a sheaf of letters. I thought about reading them, finding myself slightly curious as to the identity of the person who had managed to swindle a lich, but I could not put off the fatigue that was hanging over me any longer. So, in went the chest and its contents, to sit in whatever space between that the rest of the pack's contents lay in.

Unlike the rest of the rooms and hallways of this level, there were no vents, and I thought better of starting a fire on the thin carpet, so I settled for laying out several thick bed covers for a sleeping pad, removing my armor and eating some of the cooked meat and hard cheese that I had pilfered from the storage room. Then, as the weight of the day settled around my shoulders, I lay back, pulled a blanket over me and closed my eyes.

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Like so many dreams that I had had before, I felt myself floating, and I could not tell whether it was I or my environment which gave the sense of movement. All around me clouds and globs of color mixed and separated, swirling around each other and spinning off to dance with more of their kind, merging only to separate again. Then, from around the edges of those colors a sickly darkness bled into my awareness. It closed in upon me, seeking me with tendrils of fear and hate, clawed at the periphery of my mind with acute hunger and rage. I sensed a malice within it, envy and corruption on a scale that terrified me until I felt another presence behind me.

It felt like the solid warmth of a hand on my shoulder, bracing me with courage to resist and repel the corruption.

"Here, we part ways." said a voice in my mind. "From this place onward, you must walk your path alone as I have given to you all that I had learned from a dozen masters and a hundred fields of battle." The presence passed before me, calling over its shoulder in farewell. "I have shown you the steps of the blood dance. You need only let your mind create the path and allow your body to follow it. Dance well, battle brother." Then it pushed forward, pressing back against the leaching cold malice, pitting itself against one final foe in flares of bright gold and brown.

But it did not do so alone. "You have a mind more perfectly suited to the craft than I ever did, child of another world." A presence that seemed both aged and frail, yet glowing with vitality passed me on my left. "The tools and understanding that I have taught you are a pittance, merely the keys to unlock your potential. You will understand this in time." This presence too passed by and pressed back upon the tendrils with flashes of red, blue, green and purple, while the sickly ink-black tendrils raged and silently screamed their fury. Calling over its shoulder, the brighter presence spoke once again. "Let go of your tendency to restrict your mind. Let your intuition show you the way." Then it too turned its attention to the darkness, pressing forward with flashes of color and dancing ripples of light.

Somehow, I knew that these were Dalgoran and Maridu, my teachers and those who had been left to protect my mind from the last remnants of the lich who even now sought to plant one last seed within me and turn me into a pale echo of himself from beyond the veil. I felt my dream self attempt to follow them, to fight at their side against the foe that they contended against, but I was held still and silent no matter how much I struggled to take that first step I was held in place.

Then I heard another voice, one which I did not know, but understood.

"Their battle is long past, Nazaqi. Their time was long ago, and far away. Let them rest, now. There will be no more poisoned dreams to haunt your sleep. Not from those champions of the gods, nor from the herald of the dead. Rest now, and seek the sky."

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0.9: The Blessing of Stars.

I awoke to an odd sensation. It was as though something as familiar as a limb, or a person that had been with me my entire life was suddenly missing. Yet, I could not place what it was exactly, as I felt around inside of myself for that empty place, only that I knew it was no longer there.

I sat up, gently putting aside the blanket that had covered me and shivered in the chill air of the hidden room, still mentally feeling around for whatever it had been but finding nothing. It was a disturbing sensation, to say the least, and I realized it felt similar to having forgotten something deeply important and knowing it, but again.. Not knowing exactly what it was. My disturbed thoughts were interrupted by my body's needs for food and to relieve my bladder. I considered, momentarily, stepping outside of the hidden room and relieving myself in one of the cells, but I realized that I had little care for the sanctity of this abandoned hoard. Should anyone else find this small hidden place, I felt that the least of their concerns would be the fading remnant scent of my having urinated in a corner.

Some time later, having washed as best I was able, eaten some of the meager rations I had remaining, and rearmed myself, I opened the hidden door and stepped out into the hallway. I closed the panel behind me with a certainty that I would not be returning, though I could not say for sure why I felt that way. I considered the hallway, glancing one way and then the other seeking some inspiration as to which way I should go. I remembered the feeling of subtle anger that I had felt the day before, and though I acknowledged some of that remained, I was not inclined to dive back into it. The direction that I had been traveling in when I discovered the hidden room felt like it was not the right way to continue in, so I turned and retraced my steps, noticing small scuff marks from my sandals, and little disturbances that I had left in my passing. Perhaps they would not be enough to alert anything or anyone who was not aware of the need to look for them, but their presence was enough to put me in a more cautious mood in regards to how I moved.

The movement of air became my guide as I passed the different branching hallways. The cells remained vacant, empty of all signs of life except for the occasional pile of tiny bones where some rodent had expired. These, I was thankful to discover, were of a more natural size in my opinion. But I was still on my guard and alert when I again caught the foul scent of whatever it was that had made this place its home.

The first true sign of them that I found was in a series of cells and rooms consisting in piles of discarded bones, a rusted and broken knife, some befouled scraps of cloth and piles of scat which seemed the origin of the horrid stench. I had stumbled upon the refuse dump of whatever or whoever had made their home in these halls, and as I examined the pile from a good distance away, I also caught the scent of wood smoke, and cooked meat lingering in the noxious mixture of smells.

The second sign I discovered on the far side of the mess. Footprints in the accumulated soil and dust that were almost of a size with my own, except for the marks of the claws that appeared at the ends of the toes. They were mostly human shaped, broad and wide set and more importantly, they were very recent as the dust and dirt had not had a chance to settle and soften the outline of the footprints.

From there I moved in a crouch, each step placed softly as I crept from doorway to doorway, checking each before passing on until the scent of wood smoke and burned flesh became much clearer under the stench of foul sweat and mildew. Along with the smells, I began to pick out the sounds; the rasping sawing sound of sleeping creatures interrupted by the occasional snort and grumble of disturbed sleep. I rounded a turn in the path, and then stepped quietly back, as I took in the scene that I had stumbled into.

Five large humanoids lay sprawled on the floor around the dimly glowing remains of a camp fire. They had taken up residence in a room with a high ceiling and several stout pillars lined the walls and framed alcoves containing the remains of shattered statues. From my vantage point, I could see one other passage leading out of the room, though most of it was hidden from my view, I could tell that it was the source of the freshest air I had smelled since I had awoken far below in the catacombs. Fresh, being a contentious point considering the rank stench of the creatures occupying the room that I needed to traverse, and I knew that it was precisely where I needed to be going.

Eighty feet, I had only that distance to travel and I would be so close to the surface, I was sure of it. But that distance held one final obstacle, and I needed to decide how I would manage it.

Pulling my attention from the far doorway, and the freedom it held, I considered the creatures that lay around the coals of the dying fire. Five figures, one that lay nearest to me of the group, and had its back turned toward the fire. Its features were much the same as those of the skeleton I had found; rough, brutish and heavily muscled, it bore smaller tusks than the skull I had left behind, but the heavy brow and dark oily hair was of a kind to the dead one. Broad, clawed hands rested relaxed in sleep, one upon a hip that was barely covered by a rough skirt of uncured animal hides which only added to the combined stench of the beasts, the other curled around a sagging breast.

A female, by both the shape of the breast and the wide curve of the hip compared to the other four. These were mountain orcs, strong, brutal, cruel and stupid, they were known for raiding villages and caravans on less used roadways. They were also known to inhabit the least hospitable mountainous areas of any region unless hunted out entirely. Three of the others were only marginally larger than the one facing toward me, two males lay on their backs emitting counterpoint snores. The largest of the group lay on the right side of the fire on his side. I assumed it was male because the greasy tangled beard combined with the heavily muscled build and numerous scars that dotted his skin added up to that assumption. The final orc was on the far side of the fire with its back turned toward the fire, and so myself. That one too was female, though smaller even than the one facing me.

For several minutes, I watched the sleeping figures, contemplating how I could pass them all undetected. Could I step carefully around one side or the other and avoid disturbing their sleep? I weighed the odds for a minute more, and then pushed up from my crouch, stepping slowly down the short hallway and into the room. As I stepped into the room, my view of it expanded. To my right, just beyond the short perimeter pillars lay a pile of bulging skin bags, rough carved wooden staves and some crude stone weapons. Among them though were some made of iron and steel. They were dented, chipped and accumulating rust and grime, but at some time in the past, they had been fairly well made and cared for. I glanced over the five sleeping figures once again as I took another careful step, making my way along the outer curve of the room.

I could tell that this pack had only recently discovered the catacombs, and had yet to fully make it their own, or perhaps they were not so comfortable that they were prepared to settle in.

I paused mid step when the sole of my left foot almost pressed down on a jagged shard of something, and I lifted my foot to place it elsewhere. A stone chip with a sharp point, and one that surely would have made a grinding sound had I put pressure on it. I looked toward the large male as he slept, keeping a careful eye on him in case he shifted or came awake as I passed. It was because I was looking in his direction that I caught sight of what lay on the far side and froze in my tracks.

At first I wasn't certain of what I was seeing, but that uncertainty washed away with the flare of light from the coals. Then I was in denial of what lay on the far side of the fire and bodies, carelessly dumped into the corner of the room as though it were nothing but refuse, but the longer my eyes lay on the shape of the upper torso and the eyes of the felid female that stared vacantly back at me, the less I could deny the fire of rage that sparked inside of me. My eyes drifted from the remains of the body to the sleeping mounds of the mountain orcs that lay in their post feast stupor and I found my feet moving me closer to the large male that lay nearest me.

My hands moved almost without thought, bringing the glittering black blade of the naginata in line with his chest, my feet bringing me even closer until I was within striking range and that was when he snorted, and opened his eyes. Thought became motion, one step became a lunge, my hands guiding the blade down and forward and the grunt of surprise from the orc ended in a shocked gurgle as it struggled to bring its clawed hands up, too late to fend off the strike that landed, powered by my rage.

The sounds of the struggle, the scraping of its feet on the stone floor and gurgling of its dying breath awoke the female to my left and I yanked my spear from the male and turned on her as she pushed herself up to look in his direction, only to shriek in alarm as my blade lifted again and fell, slicing a deep and fatal wound across her neck and shoulder. Her blood sprayed out across the floor as the echoes of her yell bounced around the room and penetrated the sleep of the other three.

The two males rolled to their feet, unarmed and looking around for the source of danger, then finding me as I charged the nearest of them, rounding the fire and bringing my blade slicing upward toward the orcs belly, cutting deep, but not deeply enough to kill as it fell back and rolled away. The other male leapt the fire intent on pummeling me with its fists, seeming to have forgotten the stash of weapons so near at hand. I thrust forward, meeting its howling charge with the brass pommel of the naginata, landing a strike to its jaw and shattering one of its tusks. The blow dazed it and sent it stumbling back in the direction it had come, right into the coals of the fire that it had avoided the first time.

The sound of movement behind me caused me to drop into a roll to my right, keeping the naginata clear of my body, but that left me vulnerable to the leaping form that landed over me and pinned me to the ground, heavy fists dropped down onto my head, but the blows were blunted by the helmet and the visor snapped shut, locking into place as the bleeding male straddled me and sought to bash me unconscious with its fists alone, roaring its pain and fury into my face with foul breath.

With a lurch and a heave, I managed to push myself onto my back and brought my left hand up to grip its thick neck. Knowing that I would be able to do little by pitting my strength against that of the orc, I moved my right hand and pulled the grip of my long knife, freeing it from its sheath and driving the blade in and upward into the chest of the orc that held me down. The orc jerked in a sudden spasm, its fists ceasing their assault and its arms going limp as it looked down to where my dagger had been driven into its ribs just below its left arm, and into its heart. Slowly it keeled over away from the dagger and landed beside me, but the fight was far from finished, the howls of pain from the orc that I had struck with the pommel of my naginata had turned to howls of anger as it lurched to its feet, and I scrabbled to my own feet, snatching up my weapon, readying myself for the fight.

It came in a low, limping charge, a recovered axe in its grip. Its first swing met only air as I danced to one side, my feet slipping across blood slicked stone as I tried to find a clear space. It turned and came after me, the raw burned wounds breaking open and weeping with every move it made, its broken jaw dripping blood and drool as it closed the distance, eyes filled with madness and rage. I dropped the tip of my weapon into a low guard, taunting it into attacking high and the orc obliged, sweeping the rusted axe up and taking two limping steps forward, but that is where its charge ended as I brought my weapon up, and pushed hard with my left foot sending me into a deep lunge that ended with the blade of my spear running through the orcs neck and out the other side. It dropped immediately, pulling my weapon down with it until I bent my left leg and shoved off with my right, jerking the blade free of both flesh and bone and letting the last enemy to fall into death.

I stood there, my head turning and waiting while the harsh rasp of my breath filled my ears within the helmet. The large male lay dead where he slept, the female likewise. Both in growing pools of their own blood and urine. Both of the smaller males lay dead as well, and no movement remained by myself. I turned, surveying the rest of the room and feeling the shakes as the adrenaline coursed through me. But something was missing.

The other female, the fifth orc, was not in the room. I cursed, and stepped quickly over to the orc that I had killed with my dagger, and pulled the weapon out of its side, kicking the dead creature to lay on its face as I swept from the room. There were only two ways out of the room, and I had only one guess which way it would have gone. Toward the surface, and fleeing for its life. Down this passage, there were no cells or branching corridors, only sets of matching pillars on either side, carved from the stone and left to support the ceiling ten feet above. At the end of the hall, the wreckage of a metal door hung from one bent and rusted hinge. At some point in the past, likely with the entrance of the heroes, someone had crashed through it, and none had bothered to put it to rights, but that mattered far less to me than the sight of the stairs that curved up and out of sight.

I paused at the bottom of the stairs, listening for anything, and hearing only the fading desperate scrabble of the last orc fleeing for its life. I laid the Naginata and dagger down, then pulled the flask around and opened it, pouring water over one blade and then the other to cleanse them of the blood and gore. Then I brought my right hand up, struggling with the bent catch and finally releasing it to swivel the visor of my helm up. The air rushed over my face, cool and clear, and chilled the sweat that dotted my skin. I took a deep drink from the flask, gasping for air and then drank again while my thoughts caught up with me and the ache from unrecognized bruises seeped into my awareness.

I had been foolish, and allowed my emotions to take me into a fight when I could have simply passed through unnoticed until they had awoken at some later time. Still, the image of the unfortunate felid girl lay in my mind, and some part of me was satisfied with the bloody vengeance I had dealt to the orcs. I was lucky to have had the advantage of surprise, that time. But next time, I may not be so lucky, and there could have been more of them outside of my view, awake and on guard. I had come this far, so very close to the surface and a chance to see daylight again, and nearly lost that. I could not afford to be so incautious again.

I poured more of the water over my gloved hands, washing away as much of the gore as I could, then capped it and put it away. The dagger I returned to its sheath, but the naginata I kept in my hands, ready to respond to any attack as I began trudging up the stairs.

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The last hallway and room at the top of the stairs were both empty, though the trail of the last orcs passing through were clear enough that I could see where it had made a sudden turn and dive behind a fallen pillar, seeking to hide from me. My footsteps scraped over loose gravel and stone, giving away my position. But I was not unaware of where she hid, and I was not surprised by her last desperate and uncoordinated attack. Two quick strikes, and it was done. I left the last of my enemies behind to bleed out on the stone, hoping that the spirit of the girl they had slain and eaten was allowed to rest.

From that last antechamber, the journey through the last hallway was a short one. It ended in a tumble of dirt and stone that left only one hole through which I could crawl. I hesitated though, and turned back to look into the dark. I was not simply leaving behind the horrors that I had fought, nor the hidden rooms and beasts and creatures that dwelt there. I felt like I was leaving behind the last traces of who I had been a lifetime ago. Whoever he was, whatever name that he bore, whatever friends he had known and loved. It was all dust and memories. I had to move forward, and find a new life, so I turned again and got on my hands and knees, pushing my weapon ahead of me as I crawled out, scraping against stone and spitting dirt until I tumbled out into the open air.

It was night time, the tree line far below me beyond the edge of the plateau where the tumbled arch hid the entrance to the catacombs. I tilted my head up, and gasped in amazement at the sight. Uncountable specks of diamond light spread across the night sky. A blessing of stars to my weary mind.

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Skaldic.