Memoirs of a Lich

There comes a time in every Necromancer's... existence... when the underground is more suitable then the surface.

A time when the deep darkness of the grave is a soothing balm to the psyche. A time when there is nothing on the surface world to keep you, and when you can just sit with books, with memories... and with the Magic.

I was a village girl once. My life promised to be a simple one. Growing up, tending the fields and flock, milking cows and helping bundle wheat. Interacting with the villagers with the gentle chaperoning of a loving mother and a strong, proud father. I had a brother, but he died with the rest of them. On the day the Cultists attacked.

The Order kept watch over our land, gently tending the flock as we tended ours. Yet they were overwhelmed. Because the Dead came, and when the Dead walk... the Living die. That is how it was in the old world... before the Change. I was forced into hiding, crouched down in the deepest part of the cellar in the depths of darkness as they came. My father tried, he truly did. My mother, oh my dear sweet mother, ran at them with our biggest butcher knife. She was over-matched, and dragged down. Their deaths were swift, and relatively painless. No horror of watching your flesh be slowly gnawed from the bone by the hungry dead. No... the skeletal creatures they fought wielded swords. So many swords. Broken and cracked, moving with a lethal grace that looked utterly absurd on a thing without tendons or linkages to hold its bones together. My parents died, and my brother and I could only stare through the crack.

We didn't know that there was no hiding from the Dead. The Dead can sense the Living. They hunger for them, and the malevolent intelligence that controls them is a jealous thing. It sees the life inside you and thinks to itself 'That is no longer me. It must die.' But it is something beyond thought, yet below instinct. For the Dead are not even alive enough to have animal instincts. No, at best one could be said it was 'cleverness'. The kind that drives skeletons to hide in barrels, waiting for the first adventurer to smash them for what goods might be inside, and then... Surprise.

It would be funny, hilarious even, if it wasn't so terrifying.

My brother, younger then me, but still a young man with arms strong from farm work. He kept the beauty of youth though. I always told him he would break hearts. He broke the ribcage of the first one that came for us with shovel we used to garden. The skeleton stuck hard, but gripping the handle, ripped it away with strength far too great for something without muscle mass or any form of connective tissue. I didn't learn until later that the magic replaced that. The Demonic Energy channeled into raw, dark Magic that animated the skeletons that gave him life.

He grabbed a broken chair that Father was meaning to fix, and called out behind him, 'Run, Shhhhhh! Get out!' The Shhhhhh fills my mind when I hear him cry my name. I can't remember it anymore. All my memories seem like they are seen through broken glass, and some things like names just don't come through.

He fought as I cowered and watched with horror. Yet I couldn't help myself... I watched them. Watched the flow of power moving over them. Part of me thought 'How beautiful. How wondrous.' Because it was. A darkness that was none-the-less beautiful to look at. I was always like that. With my dark hair and pale completion I got from my mother's side of the family... I was always most comfortable at night. I never told anyone how often squirrels I caught in my snares didn't die very fast. Or how much I liked the scream of rabbits when they died.

I know, I paint the picture of a sweet girl hiding from the dead. Perhaps a little blonde haired doe-eyed farm-girl that was simple and sweet and sangs songs as she milked the cows. But I wasn't any of that. I was a troubled child. Fascinated with the dead. I honestly do not know why I was like that... perhaps something was wrong with my mind when I was born. No one ever found out though. My father would have scolded me, and my mother would have taken away my hunting tools. She taught me how to hunt. She was a huntsman's daughter, and passed it on to me. I don't know if she was like me, but my brother wasn't. I could tell in the way he fainted when he watched father and mother slaughter the spring lambs.

I watched. I wanted to help. But mother and father didn't let me until I was older. And when it was time, I was the one who handled the butchery in the farm. They didn't mind. It was dirty work and getting my hands into the flesh and viscera didn't bother me. And the steaks were delicious. Would you have detested me, you who reads this? Perhaps. But I never hurt anyone. Never felt the need to. Farm work was grim work sometimes. And it was natural for me to get any urges I might have had through that act. I might have even had a happy life, and never hurt or killed anyone. I know now that children who grow up like that often grow up to be murderers and monsters in the future. Or soldiers. The really vicious ones. Perhaps I would have been that. But instead... the Dead came... and I was enthralled.

Still, I screamed as I watched my brother die. Screamed and cried his name... and raised my hands.

I didn't know what I did. I also didn't know that the mage... the Necromancer... that was controlling them was watching through their eyes. So when I ripped the energy I saw so beautiful around them with an effort of will... both the Necromancer and I were stunned. And there, my dear, sweet, innocent brother lay dead... blood leaking out of the extra smile on his throat that the skeleton had given him... lay with glazed eyes. Above my mother was dead, and my father. Hacked down by the same skeletons I had destroyed.

I didn't know what I had done. But I could only sit as the... Magic... flowed through me. Tears streamed down my face for the life I had lost... not for the death that was coming. Right then, without my sweet baby brother who I had silently vowed would always protect when I saw him faint at the sight of blood... without my father and his strong, callused hands. Without my mother and her loving words and her gentle guidance. I... didn't have anyone who was mine anymore.

It was the most desolate feeling I have ever had.

But the magic... the magic felt so good. It was darkness sliding across my skin, flowing underneath and within it. Sliding across my bones and slipping into my mind and surrounding my heart. It was enthralling, so different. I stared at my brother. I stared at my hands where the magic passed through. I stared in complete shock... until He came.

He was wearing robes of black. A man who I learned was the man who raised these undead. One of many belonging to this Cult... a Cult who worshiped the Dead. A Cult devoting themselves to one single art form: Necromancy.

He strode to me, his face hidden in shadow, and spoke words I will never forget.

"The Grave calls you."

I raised my eyes slowly, and looked into the shadows of his hood. He raised a black gloved hand... and I knew no more.

Wakening was a surprise. I had, somehow, expected to be through with all that. I didn't know, or understand, the irony of that until much later.

I was in a room. A dark, windowless room. The only illumination came from the large door around which weak light shone in. The bed I was on was surprisingly comfortable, rather then the hard pallet I was used to. Sometimes Mother and Father let me sleep with them in their big soft bed, and the bed I was on was less then that, but still more comfortable a bed then I had woken in for a long time. I sat up slowly, drawing in my knees and wrapping my arms around them. My nightgown was torn, I could feel it. I hurt in a few places, like sticks had been pressed into my skin... only later would I see the bruises that showed that creatures like the ones that killed my family had carried me away.

I sat in the dark. I wasn't afraid, really. The worst thing that could happen to me had already happened. And my life was over as far as I was concerned. I didn't know how right I was. So I saw in the dark... and felt the magic. It was still there. And it felt good. So good. I could close my eyes and trace it flowing through me. ...And, to my surprise, I could feel more of it. In the room. In the walls. From the door. It was everywhere... painting patterns of deeper darkness in all that black.

So I sat there, watching it.

When the door opened at last... I witnessed something. I hadn't been alone in my cell.

My brother was with me. Only it wasn't my brother anymore. It was a Dead version of my brother. He stood with that second smile in his neck and watched me. Watched me with dead, uncaring eyes. I raised my head slowly, and met those eyes. I didn't even see the man that came in at first, carrying a lantern.

He was a different man then the one who had taken me. He had a rat-like face and looked cruel. And stupid.

"Hehheh. Funny. Most new prisoners go mad once they realize they are all alone with a zombie," he placed a tray on my bed. It contained food. Fresh steaks and sausages. A mug of what smelled like a strong juice. He looked at me with those stupid rat-faced eyes and just leered. He could see me through my nightshirt. I knew he could. "...You're going to be here a long time, sweetheart. So you better learn some of the rules. I'm the man who is going to be in charge of you. Going to teach you to respect your fellow Cultists. Because you're one of us now, sweetheart. And no crying or screaming or wailing will change that. Understand?"

He cocked his head at me, as if expecting me to protest. I didn't. I just watched my brother. Looked into his lifeless eyes. I remembered everything we had shared... and it hurt. It hurt so bad. So when the man struck me across the face with the back of his hand, I barely responded. Falling to the side with the force of it but otherwise... not even letting out a cry. He got a look at me though. I know he did. But he snarled down at me, a weak man taking power from someone he could hurt.

"I said... UNDERSTAND?!," he snapped, even as he reached out and gripped my leg and dragged me towards him. He pulled me up and against his body. I was short for my age, but he was short. His face was against my neck. And he inhaled my scent deeply. And it made my skin crawl like nothing yet ever had. "We're going to be spending a lot of time together, sweetness... so you and I... we're going to be close. Master and Student. And we're going to get along real nice..." His hand slid down my body... and I said softly.

"...no."

He snapped back, glaring at me, and hit me again. It knocked me down onto the bed, but he didn't follow. "You little village /whore/. You're nothing but my plaything from now on. It was only because HE recognized your talent that you're even still alive! Maybe you should join your filthy peasant family! You can be nice and cold like your brother here... and oh /then/ we'll have fun! And you won't be able to say 'no'. You'll /want/ it."

"...I want you..."

He stopped as if I'd hit him, then blinked, then grinned, "Well, if that's the case--"

"...to die."

He never got out a word. My brother responded to my magic. I felt the magic in him. And it only seemed natural to use it. My brother, using the strength of the Dead, reached out and broke the rat-like man's neck with a snap. I had hoped, somehow, to prolong it. But men like him didn't deserve to know anything more then the grave. Didn't deserve to feel pain. Didn't deserve to scream. Didn't deserve to look at me and know they were going to die.

So I took his life, and for the first time the... pleasure... came to me. The Magic responded to his Death with a deep, powerful satisfaction wash through my body. I had, even at my age, already known what pleasure felt like. And this... this was pleasure. I leaned against the wall and moaned soft and low... then, when the magic had finished giving me the pleasure of the man's death... I stood. Walking to my brother, I took him into my arms and hugged him close. He, with but a simple thought, hugged me back. So gentle, so tender. His face buried in my chest. My hands in his soft hair. He smelled like him... but also smelled dead.

I thought I said goodbye to my brother when he died... but I said goodbye to him there. In that room with the dead man. I knew, even if he stayed like this, he would never be my brother again. Just a puppet. So I put my hands to his head, and gently kissed him... and I took the magic away.

He fell out of my arms... no animating force remaining in him. I looked down... then looked to the open door. I walked forward, my torn nightdress even more torn, and my cheek starting to darken with a bruise. And He was there.

He was the man who took me from my home. The man who told me that the Grave called me. And he sat, nonthreatening, on a chair, and watched me from under his hood.

"...Is this where I die?"

"Yes."

Reaching up, raising his black gloved hands, and pulled back his hood. This revealed his face. It was more skull then face anymore, the skin so shrunken and tight. His hair was wisps pulled back into a silvery ponytail held by length of dark ribbon. He didn't have lips, or a mouth, or a tongue. Only a jaw, filled with hard white teeth. He looked at me with eyes that glowed softly, for their were no eyes in the sockets. Only two pinpoints of light.

"I am the Lich of this Cult. And you will be my successor."

I stared at him, not with horror, but with strange curiosity. So much Magic in him. So much of the power. He studied me in turn as if I was a rare and beautiful flower, at least that was the expression I got from him. I paused, looking back to the room, and asked gently, "Why?"

He shrugged, and smiled his permanent smile, "Because Death must take Life. And you needed to know. And so did I. I had my suspicions. I had my hopes. But you... I have not seen someone with your potential at the art since..." He trailed off slowly. Then shook his head. "It doesn't matter." He smiled at me again, and motioned. "Sit. We will begin. ...bring your food. It will be a long time before you can escape the torments of the flesh and subsist only on the Magic."

I paused, but then went back into the room. Gathering my meal, I returned to him and sat. And began to eat as he watched me.

I watched him raise his hand slowly, and slide his fingers against my dark hair. An action surprisingly gentle for such a horrible monster. Or so others would call him. But I knew there was nothing sexual about the touch. There was nothing but gentle intimacy and... curiosity? And sadness. I could see the sadness in his eyes.

"...It has been a long time since I have found someone worthy of being my apprentice. Know this... your old life is gone. Death took it from you. Death comes for us all in the end." I surprised him, I think, by responding after eating some of my food, "I know." He looked at me, and smiled, "You do know, don't you?"

"Everything that was Mine is gone," I told him. I was suffering still from deep shock and grief then. I barely had any knowledge of what I said. I was not truly... there... inside.

He stared at me for the longest time. And then said simply, "So be it."

And then he began to teach me.

He was the only Necromancer in the Cult who had ascended to true Lichdom. Others had taken vampirism as a quick route to power, and they were jealous of him. But, under his protection, I never had to fear any of them. They had all heard what I'd done, and while the rat-faced man had been an idiot... he still had a great deal of necromantical power. And I had killed him. That fact alone, and the fact of how I had killed him, taking control of a Zombie that he himself had animated and using it to break his neck, was a mark of my competence and threat.

He explained that the Cult were worshipers of death, yet as long as people live there would be games for power. Politics. It was something he despised. Yet even the Vampires feared him... because only he had attained what they had not. And because of it... I was left alone. Friendship was unknown to me amongst them... only fear and hatred. I learned to punish their hatred. I learned to reap their fear.

When the Order came at last, my teacher and I were present at the lair. But as the Paladins smashed the Cult's Dead and the Priests called down the light of their Chief God to destroy all we had made with our beautiful wonderful magic... I learned to hate them. I learned to hate anyone who would destroy something so beautiful. The rest of the Cult defended themselves as best they could, but I and my teacher did not. We watched. Invisibility was a simple thing, even then. It was drawing the magic around ourselves and making us as silent and unseen as shadows in a darkened room.

So we watched them die. And both of us had smiles on our faces as they died. And then we left.

The Cult uprooted and its place of power destroyed, my Teacher and I retreated into the wilderness. It was only a matter of finding an old battlefield to regain the services of the Dead. And they followed us into the dark.

I am unashamed to admit that my time with my Teacher was the happiest time in my life. Even more then my time with my family, the memory of which faded more and more as the Magic fulfilled needs in me I never knew I had. We didn't love one another as a husband and a wife would love one another. No... he was my adoptive father, and I the orphan girl he had taken under his care. We traveled, and when we found a place deep in the lands of the monsters, we dug deep. Or rather, the Dead did. The Monsters avoided us... we were so tainted with Demonic Energy that they thought us like members of their own kind. I, too, though I was alive... was so suffused with the Magic that I barely needed to eat anymore. There was only the books. Only my study.

We existed happily for years. I watched more of the flesh peel back from naked bone on his body as he became more and more skeletal. Yet when he touched me with his leather gloved hands, they were the hands of a father. It felt very good. I never feared him. I loved him. And oh, many would say 'How can such monsters love one another? A Lich and a Necromancer?' And I will tell you that love does not limit itself to good or evil. Love can be as evil as good in many instances. And we loved one another as only a father and daughter can one another.

We learned from the tomes of lore that we managed to gather or trade for. Our services were highly sought. Such a powerful Lich could animate an army of the Dead for a neighboring powerful Monster and give them full control of it. The Vampire Lords sought out my Teacher's work often. They asked us our names... 'Lich and Daughter'. Those were all we took. The Lich's Daughter. A title I never truly earned, but came to be known as. Even after my transformation.

When the Demon Lord rose to power, he summoned us to his castle. By that time my skin was bone white, and my hair had already taken on streaks of the same color. I'd cut it shorter, so it bobbed around my head and was easy to manage. Teacher said he liked it... Father said he liked it... And we arrived in his hall. By that time, Teacher was the greatest Lich to walk the world, and I was nearing my time of transformation. The Demon Lord rules all Monsters. Ruling by power, fear, and might. By bonds more ethereal and intangible then even I understood. Not until much later.

He was a great Gorgon, a male Medusa. He lounged on his throne with his tail coiled around it. The thick snakes of his hair drawn back over his head in a ponytail, looking like thick, dark dreadlocks. Until the snakes rose up from behind him and hissed. I was unafraid. I was already so close to Dead that he couldn't turn me into stone anymore, even if he wanted to. Only living tissue and the clothing people are wearing when they are transformed can be caught up in a gorgon's eyes. So we approached, and father and he spoke long. The Gorgon worried that the Undead nations were a threat to him. No other Monster could challenge him because of the power of his gaze, and the power of the Demon Lord within him. I could see such power in him... I did not doubt it. So much demonic energy it made the room thrum with his very presence.

The Lich asked what the Demon Lord wished of them. He would animate all the dead the Lord wished if he asked, and set them to work in the war against humanity and the Order and their Chief God. The Gorgon smiled, looking into my father's glowing orbs that served as eyes, "I want you to make sure the undead will never betray me. ...Conquer them. With my blessing. Rule them and control them. Herd them all. The Ghouls, the Wights. The Skeletons, the Zombies. Vampires and worse... take all of them under your command. You have the power to do this. And if you swear your oath to me now... I make you my Undead General. Master of all the armies of the Dead."

My Father paused, as if considering... then shook his head.

"I will not do this. ...I am old. I am tired. Death is coming for me at last... I have arranged it so. I cannot be your General... because I will be gone... and happy."

Looking at him in horror, I clutched at his side showing more emotion then I had for years. "Teacher! ...no... /Father/. You can't mean that!" I reached up and touched his boney jaw, and he turned his eyes to look into mine, and spoke.

"I had a wife once. I had a child. I was a young Necromancer who disguised himself as nothing but the village Mage. That changed the day the Cult came. They did to my village what they did to yours. I kept my family with me in the tower, though my wife begged and begged me to fight. I could not lose them. They were Mine. After the village was destroyed... they they sent the Dead to try and kill me and my family as sacrifices to the darker powers. I claimed the dead they sent at me and turned them upon their masters. ...My wife looked at me with horror. I have never gotten over the pain of it."

I stared as he told me a story he had never told me before. Even the Demon Lord could only listen, though clearly he was displeased. So powerful was my Teacher that even the Demon Lord did not wish to antagonize him.

"Something broke in my wife that day. Something that never healed. When the former master of the Cult came, he and I fought. I won admittance into the Cult by holding my own against him, and though he was assassinated later... I will always think of him fondly. I took my family with me to live amongst the Dead." A silent pause. "The Living cannot continue long amongst the Dead without becoming part of them. ...and my wife wasted away and died."

"My daughter, however, thrived. She had a potential much like you did when I saw you. She could rip the control of the dead even from me. And she would have been great... ...had she not died to plague a year later. There was nothing I could do."

And then at last I knew the truth of my Teacher. I hugged him, held him. I held him so tight I felt his bones creak.

"I love you, father..."

If he could cry... he would have. I am sure of it.

"...I love you too... my child."

The Demon Lord, finally tired of the show, looked at us with irritation, "Touching. But this doesn't solve my problem. I need Dead under my control, Lich. And no Vampire is trustworthy enough to put in your place. If there are any Liches equal to you in power... they are so buried in their hidden halls that they will never walk the world again. So..." He turned his deadly eyes and looked at me.

"...What will you do... Lich's Daughter?"

I closed my eyes, and nodded.

"I will be your General."

The Demon Lord smiled, and my father hugged me tight. Not out of pride. But out of sympathy. He had already set the magic in motion that would shatter his phylactery and end his existence. It was set so no one, even himself, could counteract it. And if someone tried, the resulting backlash would do the same thing. It was selfish, but he was tired.

And everyone has the right to choose when to die.

I obtained Lichdom shortly before my father's end. And as he sat, wasting away on his contemplation chair, he smiled his never-changing smile as I showed him my soul. It was gleaming and strong, and locked away in a beautiful gemstone. My body was dead. Though it would take me decades to become like he was... but my eyes already glowed a deep, powerful violet. I was still young and beautiful, even if it would eventually fade.

I held his hand as the magic slowly ended his life, and his smile never changed. But he did say, softly, "At last..."

When he died, the magical contingency he had created unleashed all of his power into me. All the accumulated strength and dark might he had held was passed on to me. And so, after sealing my second Father within his crypt to sleep, I left. And buried my second home behind me in collapsing crash of stone.

The Demon Lord had pressed hard against humanity in this time. The powers unleashed upon humanity and the Order were terrifying. So deadly the monsters and so powerful the Lord that kingdom after kingdom fell. Enslaved and ravaged. Yet still, the strongest nations of the west still stood strong. The central lands were protected by the Papal Shield. A barrier of magic that protected the inner lands from demonic corruption, the undead, and more. It was slow death for a Monster to enter those lands, and instant destruction for the Undead.

I like to think I did my father proud. I had studied so hard, learned so much. Biology, tactics, magic, mysticism, religion, lore. So much detail I'd devoured in my non-stop quest for knowledge. The Vampire Kingdoms fell before me, one by one. The Vampire Noblemen were terribly strong, but they were the Dead too. And I was a Lich. I could control even them. Even the Queen herself knelt before me... swearing loyalty to the Demon Lord where they hadn't feared anything he did before. But then... they were Mine.

As you can tell, what is mine is very important to me. Selfishness, I know. But death is selfish in its own ways. Even as it is kind and gentle and caring in others. To some it is a longed for friend to carry them away. To others it is a cruelty that snuffs them out too soon.

With only desire to feel the joy of Magic... I unleashed myself upon the Western Kingdoms.

The Dead I called forth from the graves and battlefields were without number. And steadily, one land at a time... Death came to them. I know the old me would have felt at least some pangs of guilt at this. I wasn't completely a monster even then. But now... it was merely out of the only desire I found I had left: The desire to feel the same thing I felt when I killed the rat-faced man. Again. And Again. And Again.

No member of the Order could stand against me, though they tried. I was too learned, too powerful. They died, and joined what was Mine. To the surprise of many, I spared villages. Villages where farm girls milked cows, sheared sheep, and took care of little brothers. They were enslaved by my will, so the Demon Lord could say nothing wrong. I allowed the vampires to claim livestock amongst them, but those who treated their stables of victims with simple courtesy were left alone. Those who slaughtered humans for the joy of it... I destroyed. They were Mine after all. They were allowed to be food, but kept food. Villages to feed the sane vampires and be all the blood they would ever need. Soon the villagers were transported using zombie-drawn carts and the dead carrying packed goods to the north. To the vampire lands.

And then only the Dead remained in those lands.

I actually set the Dead to the land, to keep the farms worked. The Dead could take care of plants, even if animals were terrified of them and were carried off to the north. The Dead feed the plant-life so often when they decompose underneath it... so watching skeletons and zombies farming and plowing fields I felt a vague sense of accomplishment. Some questioned my sanity... others tried to take my mantle of leadership. I dealt with them as I did the Order.

And then it came the time for the Demon Lord's greatest push yet. The last Western Kingdom fell. And when the legion of Paladins sent to fight my advance came... I fought them myself. They were too strong. ...It hurt. It hurt very badly. But I won. In the end, they died, one after the other. Some screamed. Some cursed. But I didn't find any of them unworthy. Death when it claimed them was as painless as I could make it... and then they became Mine. I had a new name by then. I was no longer The Lich's Daughter... I was... 'Delora'. I do not know why they called me this. I still don't know. I am told it means 'Sorrows'. It was a pretty name, and I kept it.

Delora, Maiden of Sorrows.

I set myself in place in the largest, strongest land of the West. Taking my throne not in the king's castle, but rather in the Great Graveyard. A vast bone yard where they buried their ancestors instead of burning them as the central kingdoms did. It was one of the reasons why the western lands fell so rapidly... ...they did not cremate their dead. And so, I waited. I could not enter the Central Kingdoms, and while rumors came that the Pope lay dying... it would not be long before another took his place and reestablished the shield. So, I waited. And watched. And grew bored.

Years passed as the empty lands of the West were tilled and tended by only the Dead. The Vampires had the greatest bounty they had ever known, and their baronies and kingdoms were swollen with enslaved populations that now existed under their thrall. I even let the Vampire Queen take the King of the greatest of the Western Lands as her husband and lover. I was told later they had a half-breed daughter, but I never knew what came of it. Because it was about that time that the Demon Lord fell.

No one was entirely sure how. Demon Lords are kept in check by the Heroes that the Chief God raises up to slay them. I knew this from the ancient lich-recorded histories I had acquired in my travels. I even learned some curious facts about the rise and fall of humans and monsters which lead me to curious conclusions, but they were never my problem.

The Dead ruled my lands, and they served me. But when the Demon Lord died, much of the Demonic Energy that suffused the world... vanished.

My studies had prepared me for this. So when the Dead fell in their numbers, no longer animated... and I heard the trumpeting of the legions of Valkyrie sent by the Chief God to reclaim the human lands... ...I gave up once more what was Mine. I sent all the Dead I had at the Valkyrie and their beautiful leader, but withdrew. She hunted me, but she never caught me.

The lands that were mine were lost, and I did not really care anymore. I was tired of that game. Conquering had grown boring. But I was certain there was more to learn about the nature of Undeath and of Magic itself. So, using Magic as my guide, I traveled deep into the monster lands until I found a tall, dark mountain range. And it was there, in the foot of one, I built my tomb.

It still stands, a vast grinning skull carved in the side of the mountain. My second Father would smile at that. He always did. It was so... gouache. But I remained. I had my servants dig deep. I set a lair, filled with traps, filled with the Dead. I got... creative. It was fun. I actually found myself enjoying setting skeletons to crouch in barrels. I could hear them giggling as I told them to wait for someone to come along. I set zombies, ghouls, and ghosts to their lairs and fitting locations for their existence. I made sure they had plenty of sustenance. By then it was simple to go to the regrowing human lands and ensure a small, if fecund, population that could grow some distance from my tomb. And I used illusion and guile to disguise myself, spreading rumors of riches and magic fit for champions within my Tomb.

And there I sit, in its depths. What is Mine were taken care of... and got enough play and entertainment in the occasional adventurer that no boredom could be had.

And I studied. I studied long and deep. I delved into the very mysteries of magic... until one day. The day the new Demon Lord came to power.

It must have been almost a century since I had dug my tomb. Over that since the previous war. The Cycle was beginning again, I was sure of it. Humans had spread and prospered, the near defeat at the hands of the previous Demon Lord spurring them to new inventiveness and industry. Genius existed in the human lands, and I watched. I learned. Scrying magic was easy. And it was... good... to watch them. Watch them be happy. Watch them make things. Watch them fall in love.

When the Demon Lord came to power, I felt it. The wave of raw... power... that flowed across the world in a wave. It was a vast quantity of demonic energy, so powerful, so potent... Even I, locked deep in my Tomb, was affected. And I... felt... for the first time in a long time. My body had already decayed to the point my smile never went away either. My white hair was wisps. My breasts deflated. The womanly curves I'd grown into... gone. I was at about the age my second Father had been when he had decided to end his own existence... and I too felt a drive: Either I must find the greatest secrets of magic, or I must see what is beyond Death. The ultimate mystery. The last barrier. One even I, soul trapped in beautiful crystal animating the body of a skeletal corpse, could not see beyond.

I had been close to finding something, I was sure of it. A process that would have transformed me into something... beyond... a Lich. I was sure of it. But by that time when the Demon Lord's power wave came over me... all desire to explore that avenue was left behind.

Flesh, long forgotten, returned. Womanly curves, full breasts, pale skin. Long snow white hair swaying down my back. I cut it short again with a flash of magic... but what came next was not what I was prepared for. I... oh it was like what I felt when Death consumed someone with my magic... but it was more. Pleasure. Mounting, rising, needy /pleasure/. I could feel my creatures changing too. Women. Becoming women. So many. I dropped to my knees as I was gripped with my first true orgasm in a century. I curled up, moaning and writhing and bucking onto my hand repeatedly.

And when I stopped, I found I was breathing. Slow, but even. I hadn't breathed in a long time. I raised my fingers up, and licked the juices from them. I could /taste/. I could taste again! I felt more alive now then at any other time save before the loss of my old life. I laughed, and rejoiced... even as I felt the magic course over my body. Such /magic/. The very demonic energy that the magic was formed of had changed. So much /lust/. So much need. So much pleasure! I began to play.

I hadn't played in... so long.

My minions found me soon enough. They had changed too. I set them back to their places... beautiful zombie girls, skeleton girls with flesh and skeletal arms and legs, hungry, drooling Ghoul girls. Voluptuous ghosts. Who ever heard of voluptuous ghosts who could touch and feel?

I used my magic to scry the land, and found the truth. Monsters and humans had changed. All female monsters kidnapped human males to be their husbands, their lovers. Where before the monsters killed, ate, and destroyed humans... now they were taking them as mates. And having daughters that were monsters like the mother. I looked for the new Demon Lord, and learned something new. It was a Succubus. A succubus of such beauty and splendor that it made even me catch my breath. White wings, white hair, and magnificent in so many ways. She was indescribably beautiful, at least to my hands. Which, learned as they are, cannot truly express what I truly saw. She was an elemental thing. Lust. Beauty. Magnificence. She was all these... and more.

And as I watched, I found her beset. The new Hero raised by the Chief God had come. Come to face her. I watched with my magic as they first saw one another. I watched as she fell to her knees at the sight of him, shocked and in awe. I watched as she bared her neck to him, a smile on her face. Happy. Why was she happy? I watched as instead of killing her... he knelt, and kissed her. So surprised she was that she didn't kiss him back at first... and then she melted into him.

The Love I saw come to be in that moment made my heart, for the first time since my brother died... ache.

I wanted that. I can't believe I could even consider it. But I wanted it.

And I snapped myself away even as they began to make love, burned by the sight like a vampire to sunlight. So affected was I that great storms and calamities befell the now human lands surrounding my tomb. I don't know how many people died... but they did. And I felt... sorry. Sorry that my grief, my need, and my emotions had caused so much pain. So much sorrow.

And so I sat at the bottom of my tomb... and waited. And wrote.

Perhaps someone will come soon. They know where the power came from that ravished the land nearby. The legend of my Tomb had faded in the minds of humanity a little. People thought it was just a deathtrap that couldn't be overcome. But now that whatever was inside was lashing out at the surrounding lands... the Order will have to send someone.

...I wonder what he will be like...

I...

...someone is coming.