The Travels of a Desperate Undead

I woke up with a hunger. For a certain definition of hunger.

When I first became a lich I lost many of my earthly desires. Notably, hunger and any sort of base need. For a time I was satisfied with this, but I found that, surprisingly, that lack of need for sustenance drove down my creativity by a noticeable margin.

The solution, of course, was to poke at the problem with some magic. A minor compulsion, placed on myself, and delayed with a complex array of randomizers and timers. Such that, in the end, I would have sudden cravings for certain foods, or views, or activities. Nothing I couldn’t ignore, but it always amused me to fulfil these desires.

“I,” I declared. “Am a little hungry.”

The others in the room with me looked up.

We were in the main control centre for the F.O.S.S.I.L. Head, buried deep within the gigantic construct. Seventeen was manning the helm, and the limpet was pouring over some manuscripts, preparing herself to learn some new magics. Mem was sitting off to the side, with large Alex-made mittens over her scythes so that she could pet the limpet’s dog, and Rem was knitting. Or trying to, at any rate.

“I can help with that,” Alex said.

“Hmm,” I said. “No, I’m thinking of something in particular. It is a vile and unhealthy food. Not something someone of your caliber should ever produce.”

“Oh,” Alex said.

I stood and made my way out the door. I didn’t require anyone, but Seventeen to follow, but they certainly did, only stopping when I arrived on the main deck under the noon-day sun.

“What are you doing, Master?” the limpet asked.

I hummed, then cast a few mage hands and had them start to carve symbols onto the deck. “I’m creating a portal. I know a place where we can get what I desire with relative ease.”

“Oh, alright,” the limpet said. It saddened me just a little that even magic this complex wasn’t met with the same wonder as it would have inspired just a week ago. The limpet was beginning to expect me to just be able to do anything, which wasn’t always the case.

“Mem’s never been portalled before,” Mem said.

“It’s not as fascinating as you might think. I suppose all of you will wish to come along?” I asked.

I refrained from sighing at all the curious nods I received. And the hiss from Rem that I summarily ignored.

Kneeling down a little, I tapped my bony fingers onto the symbols I’d engraved and allowed a small amount of magic to pour into the runes. An eldritch glow suffused the deck, and the runes activated sub-runes, which in turn pushed magic, raw and wild, into constructs that began to push out into this world in the form of whirling pools of magic.

“Pretty!” Mem declared.

“Yes. Now, every stand in the centre,” I instructed. There was a circle in the middle, cleared of any interference, and obviously made for people to stand upon. The group, myself included, came to stand upon it. Then I just needed to adjust a few things, and we were almost ready to go. I merely had to trigger the spell arrays.

“Mem wonders what this does,” Mem said.

“That’s the aiming array,” I explained. “To go from our universe, to another one. The one we’re heading towards is called Arth.”

“What’s ours called?” Mem asked.

“I don’t believe our multiverse has a name,” I said.

“That’s sad,” Mem said. “Mem names it the... Memtiverse. Now it has a name!”

“That’s wonderful,” I said.

“I don’t know if I want to live in this multiverse anymore,” the limpet muttered. “Um, should you be touching that?”

My head whipped around to see the mantis poke her mitten-covered scythe into a rather fragile set of runes.

“Please don’t touch--”

The world warped.

We crashed with all the grace of a pigeon who’d swallowed a fireball, onto a wooden deck.

The first thing I did, of course, was observe the state of the magic around me. The portal spell was still active, still counting down, and still aiming us towards my intended destination. It had merely changed so that we would be dumped in areas of narrative importance along the way. Interesting.

All I would need to do to tweak that was.

“Uh, hi there!” said a youthful voice.

I glanced around. My companions were coming to their feet and taking in their surroundings as well. We were upon another deck, though this one was made of wood. A large balloon, done in garish colours, was held up above us, and we seemed to be floating some hundred-odd necrometers above a large body of water.

“We weren’t expecting guests, sorry! Do you guys need anything? Water, a snack?”

“Uh,” the limpet said. She stood up and came face to... chin, with a bright-eyed young woman in a partially-armoured blue dress and with a rather dashing hat that failed to obscure the pair of ears sticking out of her head. “Master, is this where we’re supposed to be?”

“Broccoli,” someone said. “I don’t know if they’re all that friendly.”

A glance to the side revealed a young woman with wings for arms--a harpy?--next to a rather plain human girl and a small man with a pair of wings fluttering on his back.

“Oh, come on, they just dropped out of nowhere. The least we can do is be polite. Look, they have a cute maid, and a couple of mantis people, and a nice skeleton guy, and this girl looks very nice too.”

“Um,” the limpet said.

“Thank you,” Alex replied. “I do believe we’ve arrived at the wrong destination. I do hope we aren’t imposing upon your hospitality.”

The bunny-girl snorted. “Don’t be silly. My Beaver is open to anyone.”

Alex and the limpet blinked at the same time. “How very hospitable of you,” Alex said. “I... yes, well. That’s... wonderful.”

“Thanks!” the girl said. “So, what brings you aboard our ship?”

I stood a little taller and dusted off my suit. “A small mishap with some teleportation magic. Nothing to worry yourself over.”

“Oh, wow, that’s awesome! Well, not that you go off track, but that you can teleport. Will you be staying with us for long?” the bunny-girl asked.

“Broccoli, they’re obviously... a little strange,” the harpy replied.

“Awa, they, um, seem nice?”

The Broccoli girl--was that truly her name? What sort of parent would name their child after a vegetable?--clapped her hands. “Wonderful! We can have a surprise sleepover, and we can talk, and we can learn all sorts of cool things about each other, and by the time morning comes around, we’ll be the best of friends.”

I started pushing more magic into the portal construct.

“Oh, and I love your maid outfit, and your mantis-butler outfit. You’ll have to tell me where you got those!”

The magic took hold, and yanked us away.

I sighed in relief.

We landed in... a bedroom?

A window against one wall... no, not a window. It was a screen of some sort--using some kind of technology to transport a live image of another location to the wall--which was displaying a scene of a cityscape. Huge buildings, towering high enough to touch the sky, with small vehicles darting around in the air.

Large images flashed everywhere in the cityscape, calling for the watcher’s attention with scenes of violence and near-pornography that would have shocked the people of my home world.

Within the room itself, a room lit by small magicless devices, was an occupied bed, some simple furniture of a style I was unfamiliar with, and a lot of discarded clothes strewn about the floor.

“Interesting,” I said “A world where technology was embraced over magic.”

“What in the fuck!” one of the bed’s occupants screamed. She--a young woman with a mechanical arm and severe burn scars over part of her body--raised her non-magical, metallic arm towards us, and a small opening appeared over it. “Myalis!”

I noticed a small cat to the side. No, not a cat. The image of a cat superimposed upon another machine. It felt... very intelligent, a machine being controlled by an intelligence that was not in this room. An old one, at that, and powerful in its own way.

“This is... irregular,” the cat-machine said.

“No shit,” the girl in the bed said.

Another girl raised her head. Dark-skinned, with wide eyes partially hidden behind the covers she held up to her face. “Cat, is that an antithesis?”

“Uh,” the other girl said.

“Mem says hi!” Mem said.

“We’re sorry for the inconvenience,” Alex said. “We’re having some technical difficulties with our portal magic. It shouldn’t be an issue for very long.”

“Portal magic?” the cat-like creature asked. “Please, tell me more.”

“Perhaps I could,” I said as I turned my magical senses away from the humans in the room. The two girls had some interesting technological implements stuck in and on them, but those were all superficial, and while interesting, they weren’t the goldmine of information that the other one had, even if it had a tendril connected to the metal-armed girl.

“Are you attempting to bypass my firewalls?” it asked just as my scrying magic reached it. I observed an interesting system in place to make scrying more difficult. I analyzed it, catalogued the interesting parts for later, then moved on past it. “That was an interesting breech method.”

I sensed a whole host of devices and scanners turning our way. Not merely in the room, but from near-orbit, from the local planet’s moon, and in dimensional space.

“Bone Daddy looks busy,” Alex said.

“Would someone please tell me what in the god damn is going on?” the metal-armed girl on the bed said.

“Yeah, sorry,” the limpet said. “Mem poked a thing, now Master’s magic is working strangely. What’s that thing?”

I spared a bit of attention from my magical poking and prodding to look over at what the limpet was pointing at.

It was a device covered in long, sinuous tentacles, some of them excreting a sort of juice that glistened in the room’s artificial light. One of the girls, the one not connected to the artificial mind, blinked. “You mean Mister Tentacles?”

Alex whipped around and placed his hands over the limpet and Mem’s eyes.”Perhaps it’s best you don’t observe that,” Alex said.

“Mem wanted to touch it!”

“No,” Alex said.

“What about me?” Rem asked, her scythes raising.

“I don’t have sufficient hands,” Alex admitted.

“Myalis! Some explanation please! Because I’m used to kittens interrupting my fun time, not... a fucking skeleton in a suit, a girl, two giant talking bugs and a fucking catboy maid!”

“Ah,” I said as I felt a magical tug. “It seems the portal’s reactivating. It was interesting meeting you,” I replied.

“Please contact us again,” the intelligence said. “We have questions.”

I nodded, then felt the naval-tug of teleportation yanking us away.

This time, we crashed into a sandy dune. Our footing, quite unstable, led to us tumbling down the side of the dune until we came to a stop at the bottom.

“Master, I’m starting to dislike this,” the limpet said.

Something metallic crunched. A two-part sound that was at once a menace and a warning. “I ain’t too keen on whatever this is either.”

I stood and found that we were in a desert. Even a quick scry around the area revealed nothing, but endless sands in all directions. The only life here was small, and swift to scurry away at the approach of my magic.

It wasn’t a magicless world, but it was near it.

Nearby was a woman in a long leather coat with a metal device in her hands, a long tube with a small telescope above it. Behind her was another fellow, and elf of all things, and behind that...

“What an interesting device,” I muttered. “Some sort of magical engine... simple pistons and rotors... very precise engineering. Though it seems to have weathered some rough times.”

“Hello nice lady,” Mem said. “Can Mem hug your friend the big metal man?”

“What in the name of all the gods are you?” the woman asked.

Alex, ever valiant, stepped up to answer, and paused when the woman levelled her obvious weapon at him. “We had a little mishap with some portal magic. We should be out of your hair in a moment.”

“Oh god, it’s hot here,” the limpet complained.

I supposed it was a little on the warmer side. I flicked my hands to the side, casting an area cooling charm that lowered the temperature noticeably. The weapon swung my way. “What was that?”

“Magic, obviously,” I said. “I don’t think we’ll be staying here for very long.”

“Where are you from?” the elf asked. “An undead... I haven’t heard of the undead since... ever. You’re a legend, from before the great war.”

A great war? Ah, that could explain the temperature. There was definitely something magical about the way this desert was formed.

“So, Mem can’t hug the metal man?” Mem asked.

“No you can’t, stupid.”

The portal flickered, and once again we were moved.

This time we were deposited in the front of a classroom. A nice enough room, with rows of chairs--currently filled--and a nice blackboard at the back. A place of learning! I had always enjoyed those.

Mem looked around, spotted the students--mostly young women--and waved. “Mem says hi!” she said.

“C-class three threat!” someone yelled.

The young men and women all stood up and... started dancing?

I was confused until powerful magics wrapped around them, like spiked chains, gripping onto their souls and minds and twisting. Then they loosened and the young folk were suddenly dressed in flamboyant outfits, often with weapons.

“Quick!” one of them shouted.

I sighed and cast a mass sleeping spell over the room.

The portal flickered, and once again we were moved.

This time we were deposited in the front of a classroom. A nice enough room, with rows of chairs--currently filled--and a nice blackboard at the back. A place of learning! I had always enjoyed those.

Mem looked around, spotted the students--mostly young women--and waved. “Mem says hi!” she said.

“C-class three threat!” someone yelled.

The young men and women all stood up and... started dancing?

I was confused until powerful magics wrapped around th--

I shuddered. This had all happened before. Time manipulation magic? Was someone playing some silly games with the fabric of the universe here?

I spotted the likely culprit, a redheaded young woman, surrounded by three others that I presumed were her friends. The little clocks and suchlike on her dress were a rather obvious giveaway.

My hands moved, and I flung a sleeping spell at her. No point in killing someone merely trying to learn.

The portal flickered, and once again we were moved.

This time we were deposited in the front of a classroom. A nice enough room, with rows of chairs--currently filled--and a nice blackboard at the back. A place of learning! I had always enjoyed those...

Had I the ability to, I would have frowned.

“Mem says hi!” Mem said.

“C-class three threat!” someone yelled.

I knew where this was going. This time I snapped out a rapid series of spells, two of them hitting the little time manipulator and confusing her before knocking her out, the other spells washing across the room and setting the other students to sleep.

“Did Mem do something?” Mem asked.

“No, nothing of note,” I said.

This time, when the portal grabbed at me, I made sure it moved us elsewhere.

We appeared in a quaint little garden. Flowering bushes all around, a wrought-iron table nearby with fresh tea waiting upon it, and three girls sitting around it. The air was filled with birdsong and the happy buzz of lively bees.

It was a magic-rich world, though that magic was under a tight leash.

The young woman at the table, the two who were about the limpet’s own age, merely blinked at us for a moment before looking down at the third among them.

I locked on her and froze.

“Dreamer,” one of the girls asked with impeccable calm. “Did you summon these people here? You should have waited until after tea.”

The one they called Dreamer looked at us.

I felt a shiver running down my bones.

This was no child.

Certainly, there was a form at that table, a construct made to look like a child with curly hair and inquisitive eyes, all bundled up in a lacy dress and bare feet, but that was no child.

I started pushing more magic into the portal spell. A lot more.

“No,” the Dreamer said. She looked at us, then her tongue darted out between her lips.

I felt it. The hunger.

That. Was. No. Child.

I pushed and poked at the portal, willing it to go faster.

“We’re sorry for the interruption,” Alex said. The butler did not sense the horror, the all-consuming hunger, that he was speaking to. He did not see the tentacles crawling in the shadows, slipping in the nearby bushes, the mana-tentacles already reaching out with questing limbs to see what our portal was made of.

He did not see the pretendtacles, there and not, the metatentacles, currently looking at you, the reader, with confusion and curiosity, or the myriad of other tentacle and tentacle-like abominations waiting to be unleashed.

The portal started to activate.

“Wait,” the Dreamer said.

The portal shuddered to a halt.

Magic wasn’t meant to do that.

I gave her a skeletal grin. “Yes?” I asked while my magic whipped out and tried to fix the damage.

“What’re you doing here?” she asked.

I replied with honesty. “We were heading out to eat something, when our portal encountered a small issue. It should be bringing us to our destination soon. We truly are sorry for the inconvenience.”

“Oh,” the Dreamer said. She looked at all of our heads. “No hats,” she muttered. “Abigail do you want them?”

“Um, no?” the girl next to the Dreamer said.

“Can I eat them?” she asked.

My bones started to rattle.

“Mem would rather not be eaten!” Mem volunteered.

“I don’t think that would be very nice?” the Abigail girl said.

The Dreamer shrugged. “Whatever then.”

A space-and-timetacle grabbed and flung us away.

We crashed into an alleyway.

I took a moment to just rest there.

The others, happily oblivious to just how close they’d come to being the snack of... some creature that I couldn’t yet describe, all bounced to their feet and glanced around. “This place stinks!” Rem said.

I sighed and rose to my own feet just in time to hear Mem gasp.

“Hello little children! Mem is Mem!”

I looked to the side and found that we weren’t alone in the alley. There was a group of young women... why was it always young women?

At their head was a girl with bear-ears atop her head. She was frowning at us, hands on hips and eyes narrowed. Behind her was a child in a leather coat with a large pair of spectacles on. She was attempting to... use some sort of Fear effect on me. Interesting, and easily dismissable.

Behind them, and somehow connected to them via an interesting quirk of soul magic, was a plain, very nervous looking young woman, and all around her, three girls who were also the same girl.

That was interesting. One soul split amongst three identical bodies. I’d never seen anything like that before.

“Hello,” Alex said. “Forgive us, we are a little bit lost at the moment.”

“Actually,” I said. “We’ve arrived where we’re meant to be.”

The bear girl huffed. “Who are you people? You got any idea who we are?”

“No, I don’t particularly care, either,” I said. A glance out the end of the alley revealed our final destination just across the street. La Maison de la Poutine. A shady little establishment that sold the thing I had been craving some minutes ago. I wasn’t so tempted now, but I was here already. “Come along, everyone, let’s get a snack for the road.”

“Um,” the oldest girl in the group said. “I think, uh... yeah, okay, just... fine. Let’s go home girls, I don’t think we should mess with that group.”

“Aww, but sis, I can take them!”

“They are pretty suspicious,” the one casting Fear said.

“Let’s tail them!” one of the triplets called.

“Mem doesn’t mind making new friends!” Mem replied.

The bear girl huffed and started walking after their group. “Never met a bug person before. So, are bugs disgusting evil capitalists?”

“Mem’s never capitaled anything.”

“Oh? Then you’ll love hearing about this thing. It’s called Communism, and it’s great.”

***