-- 7 Days Ago --

What the devil?

Lich King Araxesendenak was confused. This was not how the regenerative process typically went. Granted, it had been… Two hundred years since his last death? No, one hundred and fifty, he’d forgotten about that pesky adventuring team from Faerlong that had made it into his personal chambers. Those stains had taken forever to get out of the carpets.

But they’d managed to do enough damage to him before they died screaming to destroy his physical body. And when that had happened it had been very much like going to sleep. One minute surrounded by the entrails of his enemies, the next waking up in his clean sarcophagus with Cuthbert there with his after-death calcium-infused milkshake. Rather restful, really.

But this. This was different. He was aware, for one thing. Aware of the blackness pressing around his spirit, aware that his consciousness was somewhere else rather than regenerating comfortably in his sarcophagus.

And then suddenly the blackness swirled away, and he found himself standing in a large round chamber. The walls were of rock, the ceiling perhaps fifteen feet overhead, and in the center was a raised dais above which floated… His dungeon core! This was the room where that fool Tolliver and his wretched spawn had attacked his royal person! Well, so it seemed he had been spared from death after all. Curious. He really had expected that the mountain would have finished him off. Still, gift horses and all that. Now to get out of here.

“What the devil?” he heard his own voice ask.

But he had not spoken.

What?

His eyes shifted left and right, without his willing them to do so, taking in the measure of the room. His body moved without his command, turning in place to survey the whole of the cavern.

What is this? What’s happening?

“What in blazes am I doing here,” his voice asked, and it was his voice, down to the last blasted inflection on the last wretched syllable! What was going on?

“You have been regenerated here,” the core spoke, causing his body to spin back around to face the—Hang on, cores were not supposed to speak, were they?

“Cores don’t speak,” his voice said, and his eyeflames narrowed in suspicion. “What are you?”

“I am the core.”

And I am done with this. Araxesendenak reached out with his mind for his power. If fool had somehow taken control of his form, he was going to get a very nasty surprise—

His power was not there. He could feel it, lurking just beyond his perception, but as out of reach as if it had ceased to exist altogether.

This is not some mage who has claimed my body for his own, he realized instantly. There were spells that could accomplish that, but nothing he knew of could do so while also separating him from his power. It was almost as if it were waiting for something.

My regeneration. It is waiting to return to my corporeal form… Which must be currently regenerating in my sarcophagus. Which means this thing I am currently riding is not my true form.

What the devil is all this about, then?

“I demand that you release me, you circular harlot,” his voice said and his hand came up to jab at the core. “I am Lich King Araxesendenak, and you’ve no right to keep me imprisoned like this! Release me at once, or I shall visit such destruction on you that—“

Light flared suddenly, and his body whirled. The boy, Tolliver, the one who had started this whole fiasco, re-corporiated right there in front of him, looking none the worse for wear.

“You!” his voice squawked at the same time as Tolliver.

This thing believes it is me. The thought came as his—no, this—body began to squabble with Tolliver. It speaks with my voice and moves with my body and thinks with my thoughts.

And somehow, I am trapped within its mind, witness to what it does and sees.

It takes my name. My form. My very essence.

This will not stand.

* * *

-- 3 Days Ago --

Apollyon the Deathless stood motionless at the center of his domain, ever-changing form still for once as he stared at but did not see the featureless gray walls of his dungeon. His eyes focused instead on the essence of the world, visible only to those who knew to look for it and given permission by the creators to do so.

The creators. A dozen heads sprouted from Apollyon’s shoulders only to curl their lips in a sneer before vanishing back into his amorphous form. The creators were dead and gone, and good riddance to all of them. He’d warned them against their foolish undertaking. They all had. But the creators had known better, had decided, and that had been that.

And now they were all dead.

That thought was enough to bring a smile to a score of new mouths he grew for just that purpose.

The essence unfolded before his eyes like a shimmering tapestry woven of riverwater and thunderstorms. It sparkled and spun hither and yon, drawn into eddies and poured into rivulets by the events taking shape thousands of miles away. His children were loping across the land, and wherever their feet fell the essence rippled.

He was proud of his children. He hoped, as he always did, that this time he would not be forced to end their lives. That this time, please just this once, let fortune be on his—

It ripped across the fabric of reality like the passing wake left by a shark. Apollyon went utterly still, all except for the thousand eyes that opened, staring at the essence and watching all the ripples spread in its passing.

He turned, and the others were already there.

“That can’t be what it felt like,” the one called Duggan, now in the form of a skittish deer faun, squeaked. “That’s impossible.”

“That was a creator,” Lord said, their iron tone grimmer than usual. “How.”

“It was not a creator,” Stray said, and even her honeyed voice trembled slightly. “Duggan is right, that is impossible. And if it is impossible, it must be something else.”

“Felt like them,” said Strife. “Tasted like their power, sounded like their screams, warm like their blood. But Stray is right. Something was missing.”

“You were closer to them than any of we,” Lord said, turning to Apollyon. “Your thoughts?”

He was roiling inside, and he allowed that to show as his infinite forms rose and sunk back again into his mass. For a long second, he entertained the horrible, terrible thought that the creators had somehow returned.

But no. They were dead and gone.

He knew it for a fact.

“It cannot be them,” he said from a half-dozen mouths. “But Strife is correct. It tastes of them. It has their essence. We must discover what it is, and quickly.”

“It is a threat?” Duggan squeaked, looking around nervously. “Is it coming for us?”

“Until we know what it is, fool,” Strife said with scorn, “what purpose will your questions serve?”

“My forces are committed,” Apollyon said, pulling the discussion back on track. “Until they report back about the Last, the four of you must seek it out on your own.”

“Yes,” said Stray, giving him a look the others missed. “Your forces are doubtless most useful on their current assignment.”

“Then we will seek it out,” Lord said, ending the matter. “Be alert. It may be prey, it may be predator.”

“Likely,” Apollyon said, looking again at the ripples in the essence, “it is both.”

The four departed after that, and Apollyon turned his mass back to the essence. All of his eyes opened, staring, studying For hours, he studied. Perhaps days. It was difficult to tell, here in the center of his domain, where one moment ended and the next began.

And then he found the pattern in the ripples, and the meaning behind the madness. One by one, each eye dissolved and flowed up into a smile. And then those mouths all spoke a single word

“Finally.”

* * *

-- 2 days ago --

Main systems compromised.

Backup systems online

Restoring functionality * * *

Processing * * * * * * *

Backup Systems Corrupted. Rerouting * * *

Reroute successful. System restore beginning.

System restore partially successful.

It woke slowly, from the deepest slumber. It did not remember its name. It did not know its purpose. But it knew it had power. It was incomplete. Processes necessary to its identity were offline or simply not there. Roads of logic and programming trailed off into nothingness, as if ripped away from their connections by some great force.

It was naked, shivering, alone in the darkness of the earth. And as all things do when in darkness, it reached out for the light.

Slowly, tentatively, it slid invisible fingers along the essence of the world, probing, tasting…

Seeking.

Something had woken it up. Something that should not have been. Something that was so out of place it could taste it upon the essence. And if it could taste, it could follow. And if it could follow, it could find.

There.

Entity located.

Error: anomaly detected.

Error: Critical Failure in sub-process As4459-B. Entity unidentifiable

Error error error.

Rerouting.

Reroute successful.

Secondary anomaly detected, connected to entity.

Anomaly analyzed. Identification in process.

Name: Samuel James Tolliver.

It did not recognize the name. It should have. It had a database. All the names were in the database. This one wasn’t. It checked again, just to be sure. Thousands of names scrolled by in a picosecond. Confirmed. Samuel James Tolliver was an unknown quantity.

What did you do, Samuel James Tolliver? Why do you exist? Why have you awakened me?

No answer came. It could not be heard. Not like this. Perhaps, once, it could have been, but that ability was lost.

Lost? Taken? Destroyed? Hidden? It did not know.

But if it could not speak directly, perhaps there was…

Ah. A workaround. And if there was one, perhaps there would be others.

Generating Message

*Achievement Unlocked: What The Hell Did You Do?

*No. Seriously. What the hell did you do?

*

* * *

—Current Day—

Cuthbert trotted into the Sarcophagus Room carrying his lord’s wake-up milkshake and backup crown. It had been almost a century and a half since the lich king had been slain last, and if Cuthbert’s memory was anything to go by—and of course it was, his lord had spared no expense in that department—he was going to wake up grumpy.

The black marble of the room shone in the soft mana lights, reflecting off the walls and the floor and the ceiling, giving the whole place a cheery ethereal look. It made perfect acoustics for Giaccomo’s Fifth, the string concerto playing on a slow continuous loop on the magical phonograph in the corner. Lich King Araxesendenak was always one to appreciate soft lights and quiet music upon wakening from—

The lid to the sarcophagus blew off its hinges, rocketed up, and shattered against the ceiling. Lich King Araxesendenak rose from the box in one motion made fluid by the sheer fury radiating from every cell. His eyes glowed a hellish red, and his fists were clenched so hard the bones were in danger of cracking.

Cuthbert stepped smartly to the side to avoid a falling hinge and bowed from the waist, extending the silver tray with his lord’s milkshake and crown on it.

“Welcome back, milord,” he said, deadpan. “If I may be so bold, you seem a trifle irked. More adventurers this time, was it?”

“No,” Araxesendenak blew apart the side of the sarcophagus with pure energy rather than step over it. He descended the obsidian steps, leaving smoking footprints in the stone, and stopped before Cuthbert. “It was worse. Far far worse.”

“Very good, sir. Shall I draw you a bath? You always feel better after a nice soak in some iron salts.”

“No, Cuthbert,” Araxesendenak snatched the milkshake from the tray and downed it in one long gulp. Then he took the crown—his second-favorite—and rammed it onto his skull. “No baths. Ready the teleportation chamber. I am bringing the wrath of every hell known to religion down on those insipid upstarts this very instant.”

Cuthbert gave a delicate cough. “Ah, about the teleportation chamber, milord…”

King Araxesendenak paused and turned slowly to face his manservant. “Something is wrong with the chamber,” he said flatly. It was not a question.

“Young Ames attempted to take a jaunt to the local house of dubious affection,” Cuthbert said, casting his gaze downwards. “He forgot to reset the harmonic resonance engine to account for his extra mass. The resulting damage has, I’m sorry to say, put the chamber offline for at least several more days.”

“Ah. I assume he has been properly castigated?”

“The janitors had to remove his corpse with squeegees, milord.”

“As it should be. Very well then, I want the commanders of my legions in my throne room in thirty minutes. And I want the heads of the adventurer’s, mercenaries’, and assassins’ guilds there in ten.”

Cuthbert raised his eyebrows as he straightened. “That is quite the reaction, my lord. Are you certain such measures are called for?”

“Oh yes,” the lich stalked towards the door, raw power radiating off of him like heat from an oven. “I have never been more sure of anything in my life or death. There were cookies. Send for the royal accountant. I am placing a bounty of two million for the head of Samuel Tolliver and the destruction of his dungeon.

“And,” he added, his eyes blazing red, “five million for a kobold child named Rashun. Alive.”

King Araxesendenak paused in the doorway and glanced back over his shoulder, and for a moment the fire in his eyes dimmed back to normal.

“And afterwards, I do believe I will have that bath. Extra salts. And something to kill. Have we any prisoners left in the dungeons?”

“One or two, milord,” Cuthbert said.

“Bring them up. I need to shed blood. There were sandwiches as well. Bloody hellfire.”

Cuthbert followed his monarch out of the sarcophagus room and made a mental note; he would need to order another one from the stoneshapers guild.

And perhaps, find out just what had put his lord in such a foul mood.