I stepped onto the smithy floor, where the hole was at. My thrall who was supposed to be following that damned skeleton last sent me a message here. After that, she never sent another message. I wouldn’t bother to check on them personally but after I sensed a huge amount of foreign death essence, I had to check where it was coming from, and adding to the fact that I couldn’t contact the thrall or sense her. This was where the lich’s trail first began.

“Was there anything particularly suspicious going about when the abovegrounder had left the smithy?” I asked the foreman. He was supposed to be in charge of the repair of the smithy and he was also the one that allowed the skeleton to walk in.

“I would say that there was two oddities going on,” He said as he sipped on his cup of tea. He told me that when the lich first left, he was with a robed goblin that he couldn’t recognize. He was sure there was no goblin that was in the smithy especially since the thrall ordered him to clear the area.

The second was that goblins dressed as workers were transporting barrels of black powder. At first, the head goblin worker told us that it was for ‘safety reasons’ and it was to move it somewhere safer. However, the foreman had not order anyone to move anything at all. By the time the foreman noticed, almost half of the black powder reserves were gone.

“Have you at least tried to track them down?” I sighed.

“Yes, your Majesty. I had my men mobilized to track them down but it was as if they disappeared out of a sudden,” He answered.

“So the hole. How was it caused?” I asked further.

“We couldn’t investigate fully because the hole was sealed by the abovegrounder, but from what we could gather, there was some goblins trying to sneak barrels of black powder using some subterranean tunnels but they must have caused one to go off.”

Well, there’s nothing much here to find. I decided to focus hard on the foreign death essence. Someone’s been using death magic, but it’s faint. Luckily I had been trained for almost 600 years in the art of death. I had my thralls to scout ahead while I followed the trail. I just used my agility to jump around buildings and corners since I didn’t want people swarming me. I enjoyed adoration, but I didn’t have time for that.

The thrall who was following the lich had been leaving trails for me, leaving scented marks with blood from time to time. I’m lucky that thrall was smart enough to do this or I would’ve never found it. As I got closer to an abandoned part of the capital, the essence got stronger. Someone’s been skilled enough to mask it, but didn’t think anyone would track them to here.

I reached a dam and entered the dam complex. I had my thralls follow me through the shadows in order to jump to battle at a moment’s notice. There was a wall blocking my way which was obviously closed using a mechanism but I didn’t have time for games so I used magic to cut through the wall.

When I got to the inner part of the dam, I could see the lich holding up a lit torch while undead goblins riding spiders were moving about. I was still blending within the shadows, masking my own essence. I was trying to figure out what the hell he was up to.

“Alright, once this dam blows, that damned vampire would regret pissing me off! Oh joy! Good thing those tinderboxes came in handy!” He laughed as he lit a trail of powder, going towards more barrels connected all over the place. What the hell was he up to? The dam wasn’t important to me, why the hell would I be pissed off? I decided to uncloak myself.

“Hey, you. What could you be possibly up to?” I asked him, my voice echoing in the dam. He twitched for a second as all of the undead stopped on their tracks. He turned around and was nervously looking around.

“Oh no! It seems that some kind of goblin rebellion has put all these bombs here to blow up a dam!” He pointed at the undead goblins all over the place. The goblins looked to each other for a minute before having an imaginary lamp light up in their head.

“Yes! Rebels! We blow up! Kill the man!” The goblins roared as they slowly walked over to the lich. A goblin slowly raised his sword and poked the lich.

“Oh no! They got me! Run away as far as possible, queen! It’s...too late for me! We’re all going to diiiieee!” He whimpered at me as he laid down on the floor.

“Enough fooling around. What are you doing?” I stamped my foot as I was getting more pissed at him.

“I am obviously trying to stop this rebellion of goblins who are trying to blow up this dam full of ale. I mean..ugh...I’m dying!” He started rolling up into a ball, acting like he was in a lot of pain.

“YOU WHAT?! YOU KNOW WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TO THE DWARVES, RIGHT?” I screamed at him with my full fury. My vampiric aura started to leak out and my body started to take form as my dress started to become fleshy. My thralls came out of the shadows with weapons in hand.

“Of course, I do. I MEAN. Wait, don’t fight it, queen! It’ll be too late for you!” He tried to reach out to me then fell flat onto his face.

“Enough! You are the shittiest actor I have ever met! For that crime alone, I sentence you with DEATH!” I announced

“Wait, I’m already dead so...Eugh!” The explosion ran out, knocking everyone down to the ground. Barrels strapped to the dam walls using webs were all blown up all over the place, causing ale to flood out. The explosion caused the ceiling to cave in a bit, causing snow from the outside of the mountain to fall onto the ale.

“Nice! Cold ale for the dwarves!” He cheered.

“NO NO NO! Do you know the consequences of your actions?! Get him!” I screamed at him. He didn’t even have time to react as one of my thrall charged at him at full speed. He deflected the thrall and threw her off to the wall. The goblin-riding spiders stopped doing nothing and jumped into action as well.

There was a lot of undead minions everywhere even though the explosions wiped out a lot of them, I didn’t expect this lich to be this strong. However, doesn’t this lich know about the strict undead hierarchy? I’ll have to discipline him for not following the seniority rule! From my sleeve, a whip made out of flesh and bones extended and I held it tightly. I swung it down towards him but he rolled away just before it collided.

I could tell he was starting to cast spells so I ordered all of my thralls to focus him. I jumped over the spiders charging at me then started using them as stepping stones towards that lich. The whip changed into a long blade as I thrusted it towards him. He kicked the ground and rolled to the side, but I followed up with a swing. The blade barely missed him, only cutting scratching his metal mask.

I deflected multiple hits from the undead goblins armed with spears trying to skewer me and I struck them all down with one swing of my blade. These undeads were getting to my nerve. I clenched my free hand and gathered essence of death in my fist. I threw the ball of black mist at the ground and it spread all over the floor. The goblins and spiders all slammed into the ground as if gravity started to pull them down hard. The undead tried to get up but couldn’t, only straining their rotting bodies more.

“What’re you going to do now, without your army of undead, huh?” I panted a bit since holding down an army of undead was taking a toll on my power. When I asked him that, he clapped and his spell resonated in the air. However, it did nothing.

“Ku...HAHAHA! What was that? You couldn’t even use a spell that could affect me?” I mocked his lack of abilities.

“Huh? Oh, that spell wasn’t for you. But if you want to see my full power…” He clenched his fist and waved his hand onto the air, corpses started to gather in front of him and black mist consumed them. The mist formed into an abomination and the monster roared loudly. What on earth was this monster? I could feel the power coming from it! Even with the powers of all my thralls combined, they wouldn’t be able to last a minute in a battle with it!

“Behold, my power! Minion! Go and destroy them!” He pointed at me. I took a step back as I felt a chill on my back, but that was gone after the abomination answered back.

“I don’t want to. Hmpf!” The abomination turned its head away from its master.

“What? Why not? I made you for that purpose!” He stamped his feet angrily at the monster.

“Because I’m a pacifist!” The abomination replied. The lich got angry and unsummoned the monster, the monster slowly turning back into mist and dissipating away.

“Buh...FUHHAHA! Is that it?! Well, lich. You’re doomed. You don’t have any minions left. Any last words?” I asked him as my thralls surrounded him. However, he seemed rather calm. He chuckled a bit then shook his head slowly.

“Am I really the one without minions? BWHAHAHA!” He snapped his fingers then laughed like a maniac. I didn’t really understand what he was talking about so I permitted him to laugh for a minute before he realized nothing happened.

“That means you go to my side, you idiots!” He shouted towards my thralls. The thralls twitched and all simultaneously went, ‘Oooh!’ then turned their weapons against me.

“What have you done?!” I shouted. Instead of the lich being surrounded, I’m the one being surrounded now! The thralls all menacingly pointed their weapons at me as they encircled me more and more.

“The spell earlier was to cut off the thralls’ connection with you. They’re now under my control!” He posed triumphantly. So that’s why I couldn’t contact the thrall that was supposed to follow the lich. I had first thought that she died, but I didn’t think it was because her connection was cut off from me. But doing such a thing was impossible in the first place! Nevermind that, first I had to get out of this situation.

I didn’t want to do this, but I held down the thralls using the same spell I used against the goblins and the spiders. With this, the thralls wouldn’t a problem, but it still drained a good fraction of my power. I needed to end this fast. I charged the lich while he was off-guard, surprised by my sudden move. He quickly took out his sword from the hip and met my blade with his. As we try to push each other with our blade, the ground around us started to crack.

“You bastard! You do realize that you will bring ruin to the dwarven nation, which is what the demons want in the first place!” I cursed at him.

“You’re the one that ruined the dwarves in first place! And I don’t give a crap about the demons!” He argued back.

As we continued to argue while pushing our swords against each other, we heard a knock by dam entrance. We noticed that it was a thrall in a maid uniform. This was the thrall I sent to follow the lich! Her name was...was...what was it?

“Lucia! You’ve come back! How about you help me and beat the crap out of this shitty vampire?” The lich waved. Since he had an arm off his blade, I tried to push but he recovered quickly.

“Er...no. This one is just here to inform you all about the people from Aon.” She scratched her head as she headed our way.

“What? What people from Aon?” I asked Lucia.

“Well, while this one was wandering around, one of the captains told this one that people from Aon are coming to investigate the ‘essence of death’ coming from the capital. This one decided to head to the lich to inform him because Her Majesty would kill me if this one showed up to her,” She told us.

“What?! Couldn’t you have told them to stop? Where are they?” I asked her. I relaxed the blade as did the lich. I undid my spell and so did the lich. My thralls gathered around me as Lucia was thinking.

“This one cannot stop them as they are already at the train stations,” She answered

“WHAT? How far is it from the train station to the palace?!” The lich asked.

“It’s about 2 hours journey with a carriage…” I muttered. What do we do?! If the priests of Aon realized that I’m a vampire, a massive crusade will just be knocking down at my doorstep! I do not like being stung by their damned holy spells!

“My minions...I mean, totally not-my-spider! Take us to the palace as fast as your eight legs can go!” The lich ordered and the spiders got to work quickly. They carried us on their backs and started to scurry towards the palace. Although vampires were fast, these undead spiders were much faster than an average vampire, I was impressed. However, I hoped that they were fast enough to take us there first before the priests arrived. But then again, even if we did get to the palace first, what would that do?

“Hey, you damned skeleton! What’s our plan?” I shouted at him as I grabbed onto the disgusting furry creature that was speeding across the city.

“I’ve got an idea. I might aswell do it for myself since I can’t just sneak out of the city from the priests since I have no idea where my companions are at,” He simply replied and didn’t elaborate on his idea. I just sighed and resigned my fate to him. Whatever he’s planning, I hoped that he knew what he was doing.