A group of four warily scanned their surroundings. They were in a small and cramped space filled with various crates, boxes, and bottles. At a glance, it was a basic storeroom with only one entrance or exit. However, it couldn’t have been that simple. Nothing else in this damnable tower was, and there was no reason to assume this chamber would be any different. With a few nods and practiced motions, the four interlopers moved in as one, ready for whatever malicious trap awaited them. Would the giant crates burst open to reveal legions of highly venomous spiders? Or perhaps a pressure plate would cause countless deadly spikes to spring from the walls and floor. Maybe there was an invisible glyph that would explode into a ball of flame when someone ventured too close. Actually, knowing the owner of this accursed place, it wouldn’t be strange if all of those happened at once.

The first nasty surprise waiting for the group of four was of the magical variety, but the sorceress was able to sense and disarm it before it could do any harm. The woman in question was in her mid-twenties, and as lovely as could be. She had long, straight ginger hair that framed a pair of bright green eyes, a cute button nose, a pair of full lips, and a set of lightly freckled cheeks. Her figure was obscured by the fancy yet heavy robes she wore, though it was safe to imagine it was fittingly stunning. In her hands was a carved wooden wand with a silvered tip, a sphere-tipped metal baton was tucked in her belt, and an overstuffed pouch hung across her shoulder.

“Happy, check the boxes,” she whispered. “Make sure they’re not rigged.”

“You got it, boss-lady.”

The group’s ‘security expert’ got busy without further ado. He was a strange one to be sure, and clearly not human. His rough skin was a light blue color reminiscent of the sky, a smooth tail as long as a leg and half as thick dangled behind him, and a pair of bull-like horns jutted from either side of his face. His build was lean and his movements graceful, betraying an aptitude for agility and a fondness for finesse. There was no question he was the sneakiest in the room, which made his flamboyant choice of attire rather confounding. The bright red rag tied around his head, the loose purple shirt over his leather armor, and the baggy beige trousers made him look like a child’s rendition of a pirate. An image that was reinforced by the glinting rapier dangling from his hip and the big knife tucked away in his belt.

Confusing appearance aside, Happy’s skills were undoubtedly first rate. Within less than a minute he had finished checking the room and declared it free of mechanical machinations. Well, aside from that one jewelry box that exploded when he tried to open it, but his kind were less concerned by flames than other mortal races and his reflexes allowed him to avoid the worst of the shrapnel. In some ways the disciplinary bonk on the noggin he got from the boss-lady hurt way more than the trapped box. Not literally, of course, but his bruised ego would take longer to heal than his physical injuries, which were quickly tended to by the third member of the party.

“Ignar, hallowed be Thy Light, aid your servant in this, our hour of need.”

With a whispered prayer and a momentary glow, the blue-skinned scoundrel was healed by the grace of the divine. The holy knight that administered the treatment stood from her kneeling position and reaffirmed the grip on her mace and shield. Both her weaponry and her full plate armor were adorned with the four-pronged star of Ignar, the Lord of Light. Her height was the only thing that would, at a glance, betray that there was indeed a woman underneath all that metal. She was the shortest member of the group, though the combination of equipment, training, and divine magic suffusing her being made her the toughest and arguably the strongest.

The final member of this quartet of misfits was the only one among them that could match the armored powerhouse when it came to physical might. He towered a full head over the fair sorceress, sporting braided golden hair and a matching beard both of which cut off just below his shoulders. He was well-built and decently ripped, which was painfully obvious since the few pieces of protective gear he wore left most of his chest and shoulders bare. He’d certainly look intimidating if the goofy grin and soft look in his blue eyes didn’t give off the impression of a gentle giant. Which he absolutely was… to his friends. Those stupid enough to get on his bad side would no doubt be cut down in short order by the twin axes he carried on his back.

“Come on, Cassie!” he bellowed, not even trying to keep his voice down. “Are we gonna get going or what? That lich isn’t going to pound his own face in, eh?”

“Hah!” Happy chortled. “I’d pay good money to see that!”

“I’m with Ozzy,” the paladin stated flatly. “The more we delay, the more time that fiend has to prepare.”

“He’s been preparing for us for three hours, JJ,” the sorceress rolled her eyes. “But I agree, let’s not drag this out. Happy, did you spot anything worthwhile in here?”

“Not much, boss-lady. Just a whole bunch of construction materials, a few mystery powders, some expired potions, and that weird bag of wooden coins.”

“What bag of wooden coins?”

“This one.”

The rogue raised a gloved hand to reveal he was already holding it. Cassie snatched it without saying a word and checked its contents. Just as she suspected, there was more to the timber tokens than her teammate assumed. Each of them was stamped with a stylized wing symbol that most people would have recognized. Happy would have too, if he paid any attention in school. Actually, he probably hadn’t received any formal education whatsoever. It would certainly explain his chronic lack of knowledge.

“These are Featherfall Tokens,” she bluntly told him.

“Oh. What’s a lich doing with these?”

He hadn’t seen one before, but he had heard of them. They were expendable magic items that did exactly as the name implied. He couldn’t fathom what use some undead overlord might have for these, though.

“Maybe he was planning on air-dropping zombies on the capital,” the paladin suggested.

“That… is both hilarious and kinda scary.”

“We can figure that out later,” Cassie declared. “For now, take a few each, just in case.”

“Are you expecting us to be falling from high up?” Ozzy questioned.

“Kind of. This tower is fairly tall, and we’re almost at the top.”

“Fair point.”

With the tokens handed out and stuffed in pockets, the group did one final sweep for secret passages. As luck would have it, there was one in the back corner. Pressing on a slightly out-of-place brick revealed a tunnel barely wide enough for a single person to pass through. The group decided to leave it be for now, though. The tower’s owner had proven himself a crafty and devious bastard, and this particular ‘secret’ had been found a bit too easily. Admittedly any path they took was bound to be full of traps and ambushes, but they decided to take one that was a bit… wider.

Leaving the plundered storeroom behind, the party quickly made their way back down the hall, passing by a number of chambers they’d already checked. Eventually they made it to the last fork they were at and proceeded down the other, unexplored hallway. This one led directly to a steep spiral staircase going up, which they proceeded to climb for an infuriatingly long while. Though this place was technically a tower, the sheer size and scale of it made it more like a vertical castle. The sheer number of minions patrolling its halls did not disappoint in that respect, either.

The quartet made it to the top of the stairs before they were accosted by seven flesh golems - enormous multi-limbed constructs of stitched flesh animated by foul magic. Happy rushed in first, dashing through a hail of clumsy swings to challenge the abomination in the far back. He almost literally danced around it while thrusting at its stitched joints with his rapier. The other mindless brutes chased after and surrounded him, but in doing so both ignored the sorceress and provided her with a target-rich environment.

“Sul kron kith Kor’thazz!”

With a flick of her wand and a few words of power, Cassie invoked a blazing inferno that enveloped all of them, Happy included. Or so it appeared until the sneaky bastard appeared next to her out of thin air with nary a scratch or a singe. With the flesh heaps distracted and ablaze, Ozzy and JJ charged at the closest abomination. The lady knight crushed both its knees with a pair of swift strikes, forcing the monster to fall forward and bringing its head within reach of the towering brute’s axes. The foul creature was dead before it hit the ground. The rest of them turned on the two adventurers, bearing down on them with sharp claws and wicked blades. The paladin’s heavy armor and the giant’s superhuman endurance allowed them to shrug off the worst of the assault as they held their ground. A few moments later Happy leaped at and skewered one of the golems in the face while the sorceress bore a hole through another with a ball of lightning.

The mindless minions didn’t even last a minute before they were thoroughly defeated. They were by no means weaklings, yet were still no match for the invaders despite outnumbering them almost two-to-one. That said, it wasn’t a completely one-sided stomp. The three in front had taken a few bad hits each and the one in the back had expended a portion of magical energy that would take far too long to recover. None of these were catastrophic setbacks by any stretch of the imagination. They were only slightly worse than trivial.

However, this was just another in over a dozen small skirmishes, each of which left the group that little bit more tired and injured with very few opportunities to rest. Frankly speaking, they had their doubts whether they’d be able to face the tower’s master even if they were in peak condition. Challenging him while fully tapped out was nothing short of suicide, but the group didn’t have much choice in the matter. This particular lich had been brewing a scheme of world conquest for at least two decades, manipulating events behind the scenes and gradually weakening the realm in preparation. Cassie and her comrades had tried their best to foil his plans and dispatch his foul minions, but their efforts only delayed the terrible war on the horizon. This problem needed to be cut off at its source, and fast.

So, after downing some healing potions and spending a minute to catch their breath, the four heroes pushed on. They had to face three more groups of undead minions and endure another ten traps of the toxic, explosive, and pitfall variety, but they made it. They stood before a massive stone door inscribed with runic symbols and imagery of death. There was no handle, hinge, or any other obvious way to open it, but the adventurers already knew what they had to do. Cassie reached in her bag and pulled out a hexagonal blue gemstone that fit perfectly into a slot in the middle of the huge door with a soft click. This was followed by a deafening grinding noise as the engraved slab slowly slid into the ground. A bone-chilling draft washed over the group once the way forward was finally open. With a few knowing looks and nods, they rushed into the freezing doorway as one.

The party found themselves standing in the middle of the tower’s rooftop, an enormous circular platform covered in snow and ice from the perpetual blizzard that loomed over this place. And above them - hovering, looming, waiting - was the lich himself. A creature of naught but bone and malice, with not even a single scrap of flesh clinging to it. A cold white light shone from its empty eye sockets, and a crown-like headdress adorned its bleached skull. All ten of its bony digits bore heavy rings with multiple gemstones, each of them a magic item of considerable power. A tattered robe clung tightly to its ribcage and draped over his legs, accentuating its monstrous nature. It was an imposing appearance wholly matching a lord of the dead.

Or at least it would have been, if he was taller than an eight-year-old and didn’t have that comically oversized head.

“Welcome, heroes.”

The strangely squeaky voice didn’t help much either.

“I have been looking forward to meeting you in person!”

“That’s Mezzo the lich?” Happy scratched his right horn. “Isn’t he a bit too cute to be an undead overlord?”

The diminutive lich’s jaw hung open at those words.

“Maybe it’s a clone or something meant to stall us,” Cassie posited.

“N-no. I’m the real one,” Mezzo weakly murmured.

“What foul joke is this?!” the paladin complained loudly. “I came here to fight a great evil, not some pocket-skeleton!”

“I- I am evil! I swear!” he complained, more loudly this time.

“I have taken dumps bigger than this thing!” Ozzy boasted.

“Now that’s just rude!”

“Hey, kid!” Happy was up again. “Mind pointing us towards your bone-daddy?”

“That’s enough!” Mezzo bellowed loud enough to make one’s ear ring. “I will not be belittled by a bunch of inbred hicks within my own-!”

The lich abruptly twisted to the left mid-sentence as if dodging something. He lifted a tiny hand and snapped his bony fingers, instantly dispelling both the magic that cloaked Happy in invisibility and the spell that allowed him to fly. The helpless rogue landed on the ground hard, right by his illusory double. Though it didn’t show on Mezzo’s face, he was actually rather impressed by this assassination attempt. He hadn’t even noticed when that slippery devilkin had used the gifts of his infernal blood to slip away while leaving a decoy, nor had he imagined the sorceress was clever enough to manage silent spellcasting. However, the most extraordinary thing about it was the weapon this bunch tried to use on him.

In Happy’s left hand was a simple hilt that emitted a blade of solid sunlight, its golden glow illuminating most of the spacious rooftop.

“I see,” Mezzo’s gaze flashed. “You have the legendary Sword of Ignar. This explains much.”

It now made sense why they would pursue him directly instead of continuing their attempts to locate his phylactery. Unless that soul-jar was destroyed, the lich could revive himself no matter how many times he was slain. That divine relic was a way around that. It had the power to permanently put any soul it claimed to rest. Whether it was fairies, wraiths, demons, or indeed liches, all who fell to its bite would know the mercy of the Lord of Light.

“You like it?” Happy gave it a quick spin. “Found it on the other side of a portal that led to a pocket dimension left behind by this long-dead highly-advanced civilization of pre-orcs. Y’know, the usual.”

The lich’s mood plummeted drastically at the mention of those people.

“Playtime is over. Disappear.”

Mezzo then displayed the immense arcane might he held in life and then further developed in death by blasting the ground beneath him with an enormous bolt of lightning. A ring of electricity washed over the entire rooftop in the blink of an eye. Happy was somehow quick enough to jump out of the way and Cassie managed to ward it off with a counter-spell at the last moment, but the two muscle-brains couldn’t avoid it. JJ’s armor shielded her from the worst of it, but Ozzy took the brunt of the spell and collapsed on the spot. He wasn’t breathing.

This was the moment that the ginger-haired sorceress finally went all out. She’d been limiting herself to lower-tier spells the whole evening, conserving her energy so she could take on the big little man himself. Sure, the ones she used before were flashy and powerful, but they paled in comparison to the eighth circle magic she was about to unleash. The bricks at her feet warped and twisted like waves in an ocean. A massive stone hand erupted out of the ground in front of her. It reached up and grasped the bastard that just killed her friend. It squeezed down on him with enough force to make his bones audibly creak and snap.

With another bony snap, the hand collapsed into an inanimate pile of bricks, leaving the lich hardly any worse for wear. The sheer ease with which he dispersed her most powerful spell left the sorceress flabbergasted. He arrogantly brushed off some of the dust on his shoulder before dropping a house-sized meteorite right on top of Cassie. Or at least he tried to, but she counter-chanted him, disrupting his magic before it was fully invoked. Definitely a clever girl that one, no doubt an expert when it came to arcane combat. That was hardly surprising considering she’d spent the last decade preparing to exact revenge upon him for what he did to her family. Still, it was impossible to deny her talent.

And Mezzo hated talent.

The sorceress flung a lightning bolt at him, which he took without even flinching. He then shot back with one of his own. The sorceress was unable to disrupt the spell and it struck her in the chest, forcing her to the ground. She couldn’t take another hit like that. However, she wasn’t alone in this. Her teammates had used the precious seconds she bought them to help their fallen comrade. The paladin invoked her God’s mercy to bring him back from death, but only just. The rogue then force-fed the fallen Ozzy the most potent healing potion they had. It wasn’t enough for a full recovery, but plenty to get him back in the fight.

“I see you down there!”

The lich blasted the trio with a wave of pure death energy. The pair could no more avoid it than they could avoid the wind and snow. Thankfully, they proved hardy enough to partially resist the vile magic’s attempt to sap their life force and were merely weakened instead of killed on the spot. Ozzy growled as he rose to his feet, eager to make up for his poor showing thus far. Though he came from a tribe renowned for its savage brutes that fought with pure rage and willpower, and certainly looked the part, he was actually a druid. One that specialized in a very peculiar form of magic. With a primal roar and a deafening boom, the burly human transformed into a bird of prey twice his size, its silvery feathers buzzing audibly as he took flight.

“Oh, hoh! A thunderhawk!” Mezzo exclaimed. “And here I thought they were extinct!”

Ozzy screeched angrily at him, a sonic assault that would leave grown men reeling. The undead monstrosity was wholly unaffected, however, and assaulted the creature with a concentrated beam of heat that burned a hole clean through its chest. This did little to stop the druid from slamming his beak right into the tiny lich, sending him spinning ass-over-skull through the air. Happy used this chance to stick him with three silver arrows in rapid succession, the blessed metal piercing through and lodging itself into his accursed bones. Mezzo retaliated by assaulting the devilkin’s mind with another foul incantation. Happy’s wits weren’t as quick as his feet and he succumbed to the spell, rendering him paralyzed and helpless. The paladin rushed over and used what little magic power she had left to cure the affliction moments before the devilkin was skewered by a barrage of conjured ice spikes.

It was only then that Cassie finally recovered from that painful shock. She grit her teeth and rose to her feet. Reaching into her trusty bag, she pulled out one of the trump cards she had prepared. An actual card, at that. One made out of platinum, inscribed with ancient elven script, and bearing an unflattering caricature of a drunken dwarf. She wasn’t sure whether it would affect someone as powerful as Mezzo, assuming she could invoke the item’s magic at all. However, as the leader she judged it was worth the risk.

“Quartet!” she shouted to her teammates. “Fool’s gamble!”

“Well, now! What are you up to over there?!”

This naturally drew the lich’s attention. However, all three of her comrades had moved to cover her before he could do anything. Mezzo tried to get through them and stop whatever that sorceress was planning, but that was easier said than done. Ozzy shapeshifted yet again, transforming from a wounded thunderhawk into a scorchland grizzly. This magical beast was several times larger and more durable than its mundane variant. It served superbly as living cover, obscuring the sorceress behind a mountain of smoldering fur and rage. The lich had to conjure a giant hand of pure force to restrain and move the obstacle out of his way, but another was waiting behind it. The paladin was standing above the crouching redhead with her shield raised. She stoically body-blocked two of Mezzo’s lightning bolts without the slightest hint of hesitation, but faltered on the third. Blessed arms or not, she could only take so much of the lich’s magic before succumbing to it. Thankfully Happy had been doing his part. He could not protect Cassie like JJ or Ozzy, but his rapid barrage of silver arrows kept disrupting the lich’s concentration. A lucky shot to Mezzo’s eye socket caused a gap in focus wide enough to make him lose the spell restraining the scorchland grizzly. With the magic hand gone, the druid was able to take over meat shield duty from the paladin just in the nick of time.

Those hard-fought few moments the team managed to buy Cassie were just enough to let her finish reading the inscription on the platinum card and invoke the magic therein. She leapt out from behind the other two and flung the now active Fool’s Arcana at Mezzo. He tried to fly out of the way, but the magic item chased him down and stuck to his enormous forehead without fail. The pint-sized lich then hurled uncontrollably downward, his bony butt clattering loudly as it hit the ravaged rooftop. He hopped to his feet eager to unleash some arcane devastation as payback for his humiliation, only to discover he could not invoke any magic whatsoever. Not even his items answered his call.

“Oh. Oh, that’s good,” he pointed at the sorceress. “Very good indeed.”

The Fool’s Arcana was one of the twenty-two cards within the Deck of Destiny. They were a one-of-a-kind set of magic items that disappeared after being used and reappeared at some random location an unknown amount of time later. The one stuck to Mezzo’s forehead nullified all but the most powerful of magic in a small radius around it, robbing the lich of both his vast arcane arsenal and the protective wards that kept his physical form safe from serious harm. Admittedly none of the adventurers’ spells would be able to touch him, but that made little difference. As he was right now, the mighty lich was as brittle as a basic skeleton, and Cassie’s burly friends would have no difficulty crushing him before the Arcana’s effects ran out. That wasn’t even considering the Sword of Ignar, an artifact of divine origin that would surely overpower the anti-magical field. The sack of bones was without a doubt in a checkmate situation.

Except that Mezzo the Magnificent wasn’t playing chess, but four-dimensional checkers. He pulled a strange device from his robes before the heroes could lay into him. It was a metal canister the size of a beer mug, with a string poking out of one end of it. Mezzo tugged on it vigorously, prompting the cylindrical object to burst open into a wave of pink goo that enveloped both himself and his ‘guests.’ The stuff settled and thickened instantaneously, gluing all of them to the ground. The heroes struggled to break free, but neither the paladin’s divine might nor the druid’s beast-shifting proved sufficient to overpower the viscous slime.

Fearing that this would buy the bastard enough time for the Arcana to wear off, Cassie did not hesitate to use the last high tier spell she could muster. After a hasty chant spoken with a ragged voice, she unleashed a corona of harmless blue flames that flooded over the entire arena. It was a seventh-circle incantation called Mana Purge, designed to burn away all lesser magics within its considerable area of effect. However, though the spell went off without a hitch, the sticky goo remained. Momentarily confused, it took the sorceress a few seconds to realize her folly.

This was not magic.

“Behold! The power of science!” the lich boasted. “It’s a wonderful thing, is it not?”

“Bastard!” Cassie screamed at him. “Fucking drop dead already!”

“No, you first.”

Though it should have been impossible given the lich’s lack of a face, he nevertheless gave off the impression of a malicious smile.

“Servants!” he roared. “Contingency number three!”

The heroes looked around in a panic as they anticipated hordes of undead minions to swarm over them while they were trapped. That did not happen. Instead, the rim of the circular rooftop lit up with an intense white light. A second, smaller circle followed suit, and then a third and a fourth. This kept going until there were nine of them in total, the innermost concentric circle laying right underneath the frozen party and their cackling adversary. Parts of the magical formation were disrupted and fizzled out where the roof was damaged in the fight, but enough remained intact for the stored magic to proceed unhindered. Cassie’s mind raced as she tried to decipher and identify the spell, but it was unlike any she had seen before.

“Do you like it?” Mezzo merrily asked. “I spent twenty five years developing this beauty, and another three weaving it into the tower. It turned out rather well, if I do say so myself!”

“O-original magic?” the sorceress muttered in shock. “That… that can’t be!”

“Oh, but it can! I wasn’t called Grand Magus for nothing, you know! Ah, right, this might actually overpower the Fool’s Arcana, so I should take my leave.”

Before anyone could question what exactly he was intending to do, a decomposing raven landed on the lich’s skull. It stuck its beak in his eye and poked around in it for a few moments, then pulled a pin. Mezzo’s head then exploded in a burst of green flame, leaving the rest of him limp and inanimate.

“That coward!” Ozzy roared. “What sort of man escapes via suicide!”

Since it wasn’t the Sword of Ignar that finished him off and his phylactery was still intact, the monstrous spellcaster would be able to revive himself within a few days. Meanwhile his unseen minions continued to execute whatever ‘contingency’ he had prepared, causing the outermost circle to crackle ominously as its light intensified.

“Boss-lady? What’s going on?” Happy called out. “What’s gonna happen to us!?”

The second circle went soon after.

“I… I don’t know…”

She couldn’t even begin to fathom what this magic would do, but the fact that the lich offed himself so that he wouldn’t get caught up in it didn’t bode well. Was it, perhaps, something worse than death?

“Snap out of it, Cassandra!” JJ bellowed as the third circle went. “You’re the leader! Tell us what to do!”

“There’s nothing we can do!” she snapped back. “I’m out of spells and I can’t reach any of the stuff in my bag like this! I don’t see any of you idiots throwing suggestions around, either! And even if we somehow escape, that bastard knows we have the Sword! He won’t let us get near him in a million years!”

A heavy silence descended upon the group. This was far from the first time they had stared death in the face, but they had never seen Cassie give up like that before. The fourth and then fifth circle went as the mentally and physically exhausted group came to terms with their predicament.

“I’m sorry,” the redhead’s voice quivered. “He got the better of us. Of me. I should’ve been more prepared.”

“Is this to be our end, then?” the druid asked.

“Unless a miracle happens…”

“Don’t look at me. I’m tapped out on miracles for the day,” the paladin frowned under her helmet.

“Then yeah, that’s it for us.”

The sixth circle crackled, punctuating the grim reality.

“Hm. I see,” the big man smiled broadly. “Then, allow me to be the first to say that it has been an honor and a privilege to travel at your side, Lady Weathersax.”

“… Thank you, Ozzy.”

The seventh circle was next.

“Though it was cut short, our adventure was one worthy of song,” the paladin bowed her head. “I hope it serves to inspire others to stand against Mezzo’s madness as we did.”

“I hope so too, Joan.”

Number eight did not delay.

“Cassie… I love you. Forever and always,” was the only thing Happy could muster.

“Forever and always,” she replied without hesitation, then addressed the whole group at once. “I’ll see you chuckle-nuts in the next one.”

Then the final circle crackled, and the world went white.