”Death? C… could you elaborate?” Iris asked while trying to nudge Anastacia awake with her foot. The situation was already well and truly out of her current scope, and should the lich choose to attack them, there was nothing she could do in time.

While not immune to necromancy, the magically bolstered willpower of a lich would have been enough to resist all but the strongest of necromancers long enough for their spells, curses or other hexes to come into effect. Since necromancers were no more resistant to magic than any commoner untrained in it, it wasn’t exactly a fight one would want to take alone. Iris considered trying to do what little she could, but had no faith in her powers without her wings to direct them, and fearing the lich would notice and take offence to it, she did nothing but stood her ground by her friend.

Obviously lacking the physique for normal speech, the lich’s words were spoken through magic. They resembled both whispers and screams overlapping with each other, but only as an echo from somewhere far away instead of direct voices. It raised its skeletal hand towards Iris, seemingly with intent to cast something, but then simply held still when nothing happened in response. “Why do you stay your hand, child of death? I act to offend you and your companion, but you do not answer in force. Many vices and few virtues have always been attributed to you, but neither patience nor mercy counted among either of them. Sufficient power brews within you to oppose me as well, but remains unaimed, without intent.” It asked and slowly lowered its arm.

Admitting that she simply couldn’t do it seemed like it would put her in an even worse position, so Iris had to come up with something else. “For better or worse, I’m bound to hear out those that ask for help.” She explained the reasoning that had kept her from running in the first place.

“Much has changed in my slumber, but I knew not for it to be so drastic that a necromancer would utter the word ‘help’…” The lich whispered as it slowly floated to the side, keenly inspecting the necromancers for some reason instead of attacking. “This accursed world is not kind to those who are to uphold it, even more wretched to those who try to help it against all reason. Its fetid cycles degrade all that is good into twisted selfish husks. To learn that out of all the ages, it is now that the necromancers of all people have grown a conscience – morbidly humorous. There is naught left to reward you for this change, it is but a new insult existence will use to strike you down.”

After their revolution, trying to dispel the stereotypes of evil necromancers had been an important part of the inquisition’s work, and something Iris was definitely passionate about – so the lich’s words felt more like taunts directed at her than commentary of any sort. Perhaps unwisely, she chose to speak up. “I don’t think you’re right. The world is far from as callous or cold as you say, there are plenty of people willing to accept us if we just put in the work and show that we’re trustworthy. I myself can vouch for that.” She most definitely unwisely challenged the lich’s words.

“You posses not the knowledge, not the experience nor the vision to pass such estimations, simply the anecdotes of a fledgling who still takes mercy and kindness at their face value. I, however, can not fault you for it, for I have been there – been where you stand, adamantly defending the goodness I thought I had witnessed in many.” The lich said, not sounding agitated by getting spoken back to, but simply tired. It slowly floated across the snow, just barely leaving it untouched by the tips of its slightly rusted sabatons. “Being who I am, what I am, my gaze is wide and acute. I see all that arcane connects, I see the vile machinations above and below us, I see the hearts of people, rotten by power. I see that if there ever was unconditional good in this world, it has been broken and its mangled corpse dragged across to sky to show all that it isn’t to be tolerated in this nightmare.”

“That’s… unnecessarily graphic.” Iris commented, now kicking Anastacia slightly harder in the hopes of waking her up. Until that happened, there was little more she could do but to keep the conversation going – though it was odd that the lich hadn’t already whisked them away with some absurd spell, it didn’t even really feel like it was even being considered. “Say, mind if I ask something? Why are you here then? In the middle of nowhere, instead of doing the usual lich stuff of finding an old castle and slowly amassing power there? That’s what you guys do in all the books.”

The lich clearly hadn’t expected such a direct question and halted its ghastly meandering. “Why? Why not? It has been but weeks since I woke into this cursed plane once more, yet I can see that all of it is pointless. I did not go through the ritual to pursue some vain dreams of power, nor has that become my aim since, because why? What possible meaningful misery could I impart on this cruel and broken world that its uncaring gods and malevolent rulers haven’t yet done? To kill and torture the innocents, to conquer land or curse what foolish heroes there are left? This world will see those done, with or without aid from an old sorcerer…” It lamentingly reasoned and gently brushed the clay amulet hanging from its neck. “I see now that you can not give me the help I seek… Take your companion and leave me be. I will attempt to recall the unwilling thralls I used to herd you to me and allow passage to you and the crimes against nature you travel with.”

The realization dawned on Iris. “Oh… by death… did you mean yours?”

“A release from this waking nightmare I’ve forced on myself.” The lich stated dryly. “The cruel laws of this spell prevent me from breaking it myself. The only option is sufficient and swift damage to my physical being, enough to release my trapped soul before the body is repaired by the spell – something trivial to a necromancer such as yourself, but difficult to achieve otherwise. But I see now that there is too much doubt in your heart, instilled by kind but misguided words – to force your hand with threats now… no, I will not have my last act be no better than this miserable world. I refuse to play into the hands of the cursed fates. Refuse to impart my misery onto the unwilling.”

Iris herself was on the fence about the situation, on one hand ridding the world of a lich would have probably been a good thing overall, but one that showed no intent of doing anything particularly evil and simply sounded like it had had enough of life felt somehow wrong. A few weeks ago, it would have been a non-issue, but after listening to Emilia and Anastacia for a while, she would have had to known more to make such a decision – if it was even hers to make.

“Waste not your thoughts on me, young necromancer. I can now see two keen gazes staring down at you, one clad in fire and the other in night, both curiously following the path your heart takes to better include you in their future plots. Neither is to be trusted, neither is to be worshipped, neither is to be listened to – all that leads to places of arbitrary justifications for corrupt deeds.” The lich stated, still in melancholy whispers but firmer about its opinion. It then gestured for Iris to leave and floated towards its grave mound to sit down on one of the large stones that had fallen over by its entrance.

Having grown up with stories of monstrous liches of the past, that not only had the gall to imitate the art of necromancy with vile magics but also used their abilities to bring ruin to large swaths of land by slowly replacing all life with their undead thralls and poisoning the soil and water itself with curses to impede anyone trying to approach their lair, Iris was conflicted by the one she had met. Though blooming with arcane prowess, the lich seemed unwilling – or almost unable to do anything with its might because of its broken spirit. She couldn’t help but to feel sorry for it as she watched it silently rest as little green flames inscribed glowing runes on the snow around it.

“Make your escape, misguided little necromancer, go revel in what false hope you still manage scrape together in this chronic nightmare of ours before it all fades for you as well.” The lich’s voice urged her, sounding no more or less distant despite the lich itself having moved away.

Already regretting what she was about to do, Iris made sure Anastacia had her cloak under her so she wouldn’t freeze and started walking towards the lich. She sat down on one of the other stones somewhat near it and uncorked her bottle of tonic for a bit of liquid courage. “Say, would you like to just talk for a bit? We came here to sort out the undead issue, which is being… sorted out… by the two we left over there. So there isn’t much for us to do before that’s done. I’d also prefer to get back to the village we came from without having to carry my friend.”

“Spare your efforts of kindness for someone who desires to be consoled, or do you seek to feel better of yourself by looking down upon someone’s misery?” The lich whispered in a disgusted tone.

“Well, you see, I’ve been doing this little self-improvement journey while taking a break from my duties. Noting too interesting for you I’m sure, but I seek answers about how to do better or how to not let setbacks crush me – or something.” Iris explained. She knew she couldn’t really offer solutions to the lich, but felt like neither Anastacia or Emilia could have left the situation as it was, and would have done whatever they could. “So I was thinking, let me hear out your story or whatever else you feel like saying. That way at least someone knows what happened to you, and maybe there’s a teaching to be found somewhere in there – a mistake to be avoided, even you should agree with that.”

“Existence is a mistake to be avoided, little one, there’s no teaching more valuable than that – but it is one that none will believe until it is too late.” The lich noted without showing a hint of enthusiasm about the idea. “But I will share what I know, for you are truly a strange necromancer. If nothing else, it could throw stones between the gears of unending torment we are all puppeteered by.”

“Thanks! I learned from an even stranger one.” Iris nodded cheerfully towards the passed-out necromancer in the snow.

The lich lifted up its hand, drew a glowing rune in the air with its finger and muttered something in a language Iris didn’t even recognize. As the rune faded, nothing seemed to change as far as Iris could tell, but had she paid more attention, she could have seen that none of the sparsely falling snowflakes landed on Anastacia anymore.

“Yes, had I known better, I would never have gazed upon her to spare myself of this knowledge. Though your part in the cruel plans of this world is not insignificant, her role is to be doomed.” The lich continued to lament.

“Wait, what? Doomed?! WHY?! WHEN?!” Iris exclaimed and almost jumped off her rock.

“There is no one event to smite her, no great enemy to defeat to save the princess. It is the tireless march of time and unjust machinations of whatever higher wills there are. The ones pulling strings behind gods and mortals alike.” The lich continued to explain with a somber tone. “This world is unkind to old things, and nothing short of cruel to what is kind. Her spirit is a remnant from times long past, the last stand of a downward spiral from eons ago. For the crime of being who she is, this world will crush and break her, just the same it broke me and countless others before us. Those immortal driven insane by their unending torment, gods drowned in apathy for the pointlessness of their existence, and us – the notable out of mortal masses, broken by loss of what we could not save. Such is the truth of time and this world, fate will see to it that all she cares for will be torn violently torn from her, just to mock her perceived might. From there, she will turn her mighty blade against herself or the world, just as I have, just as those before us.”

It was hard to tell if what the lich said was the truth or simply more laments of a depressed undead projecting its beliefs of the world onto others, but it did sound concerning nonetheless. “Is… is there anything I can do for her?” Iris uttered.

The lich finally turned towards the inquisitor. “Nothing you might be willing to do. To witness her fall is your lot in this life. Fret not though, it is not your fault we exist to be tortured.”

Iris looked at the peacefully snoring Anastacia and couldn’t help but to have her mood ruined. She already knew one immensely powerful necromancer who was going through trouble she couldn’t help with, and it made her think that maybe that really was inevitable for Anastacia too. “What about you?” She tried to change the subject. “What possessed you to pursue immortality if this is your opinion of life? I doubt people accidentally turn to liches, so you must have had a reason? Actually, who are you anyway?”

The lich whispered a single word, once more in a language foreign to Iris, and upon the utterance the world around them shifted. To anyone not in the immediate vicinity but still in the spell’s range it may have felt like a moment of lightheadedness or a tiny earthquake, but where Iris was, the effect of the word was apparent; the mechanisms behind all order in the world, its seasons, the laws of nature and time itself, all stalled for a fraction of a second – against the will of the fate itself. In the areas surrounding the woods, the winter became a fraction of a second longer and all living beings gained a fraction of a second more time to live. Though she didn’t know the meaning of the word, the point came across loud and clear to Iris, it was the lich voicing out all the frustration her question had caused, simply aimed towards the world around them instead of obliterating her with a more precise spell.

“Apologies for my outburst, but to remember is to relive the pain – but then again, what does a pain of someone like I matter? There may have once been a name, but it has lost its meaning and I care not to remember it. None that I once was matters now, and had I known then what I now know, it would not have mattered then either – but out of pity for you, who are blessed with blindness, I will recite a tale if not for no other reason than once prevent it from repeating itself.” The lich spoke again, but before it continued, it turned its hollow eyes towards the sky for a moment and stared into it, as if searching for something. “A sorcerer, an alchemist, a shaman, a decent man once lived in these lands, maybe some four hundred years past. Tending to the arcane needs of the simple folk, sometimes sought out by the lackeys of mighty lords and other supposedly better people. A dash of natural talent, a pinch of luck, years of research and experimentation with all things arcane ensured that their skills grew to be potent in scale uncontested by almost any. Visitors from higher places pestered them endlessly as word spread around. Offers of great riches and endless material for study came and went, but against all reason, they chose the life in these woods – can not recall why but no reason besides sheer madness explains it.

“The sorcerer claimed blind happiness and saw good in all things, much like you, little necromancer. Claimed there was reason in this world, claimed there was justice, claimed there was anything but unending misery without reason. Thought joy and happiness as something more than a transient high before the fall. Years, decades passed in misguided bliss, unable to see the world slowly rotting and festering for the little specks of good they found in it.” The lich continued its story, each world carrying more and more disdain for the sorcerer it had once been.

For the whole time Iris was listening very closely, not only because this may have been the first recount of their life a lich had ever given to anyone, but because she couldn’t help but to wonder what could poison someone so against the world. Despite focusing on the story, she noticed that the lich kept looking up at the sky and searching something from the clouds while a second, much lower and hardly audible voice kept speaking an unintelligible language under the lich’s words.

After a brief respite to calm itself, the lich moved on. “Sometime during the eve of the sorcerer’s already alchemically extended life, came along a person whom the utter moron fell in love with – a grave mistake if there ever was one. Love is little more than the most devious of lures life can throw at you, a fever dream not to be trusted any more than the other voices in one’s head. And so, the world waited, just long enough for the potential pain to reach its apex, and gave the two some years with each other.

“However, a lifetime is but that, finite in what little mercy there is for mortals. Yet, the foolish sorcerer did not accept this, and instead feverishly searched for increasingly desperate ways to lengthen their time together. Ultimately the search culminated in an ancient ritual, where one’s soul would join the arcane instead of return where it once came from. Hideous acts were required for the meagerest of ingredients and obscurest of materials, but the sorcerer thought a chance to remain with their beloved was worth the chaos caused in their wake. Hiding it all from the one it was for, the sorcerer pulled strings, coerced and forced his will onto others, to build this mound and the ritual site it houses. The stars had aligned perfectly, no doubt in mockery, and all was completed but hours before the sorcerer’s beloved would inevitably pass. Relieved, the exhausted sorcerer laid down within the ritual site by the other, thinking of the blissful eras to come as the two could continue their story, in wrenched forms most unnatural, but together.

“For a few centuries, the ritual fed on the land nearby, draining power from all things arcane that passed so that one day the two could wake. Weaving the soul and body into magic of the world itself, to sustain both and shield them from death, slowly rewarding the cruelty it had required from the sorcerer. But alone I woke, to a blundered grave, to stolen artefacts, to broken ritual site, to the pointlessly crushed bones of the one I loved, to the ceaseless maddening laughter of the fates behind it all!” The lich ended its story, almost shaking with reignited hate before franticly grasping the talisman hanging from its neck and rubbing it to calm down.

Iris didn’t know have words to comment on the story with, nor did she know if it would have been wise to do so anyway. While she certainly was saddened over what the lich had gone through, a part of her couldn’t help but to think what the lich was going through was simply consequences of its actions and not some form of intended punishment. Maybe it was her life of not thinking much of the divine until very lately, she found it hard to believe any god or something like that would bother to take issue with a single mortal for no reason – but then again, she herself had gotten attention from them.

The lich could no doubt easily see through Iris’ thoughts and suggested she should share them. “Say what you must, necromancer. Time for words has passed for me, your opinions bare no weight to anger me.”

“Well… don’t you think that you maybe kind of deserved at least some of this?” The necromancer pointed out a bit crudely. “Based on what little I know of the rituals required for a creation of a lich, no decent person would take even the first step towards it…”

“Desperation makes monsters of us all. Speak not for my actions if you know nothing of true desperation. There is no speck of love in your heart, you know not how it poisons a soul.” The lich defended its past actions, but remained calm as it had promised. “Now, as one with arcane, I can see past the ironclad limits of mortality, I can see the weight of things in this world – I can see the hundreds that lost their lives for our immortality did not matter… Just as I… do not matter.”

“I can’t speak for you, or for this beloved of yours, but you say they had no idea of your doings?” Iris moved on with what she was trying to say. “I can’t even imagine how disgusted I would be to find out that someone had bought my immortality with the lives of others. You say you were a decent person once upon a time… If the one you loved was truly so wonderful that it drove a once decent person into your position, I do not think they would think much better of it than I do – and I think you knew they wouldn’t or you wouldn’t have kept it hidden from them.”

The lich said nothing. For a moment, it took its eyes off the cloudy skies above. First to stare at Iris and then at the talisman it carried. With its face being a silk-covered skull, it was hard to say if it agreed or disagreed with the opinion Iris had, but it certainly had to think about it.

“If your ritual would have worked like you wanted, your beloved would have woken into the exact same horror you live in now – as well as the realization of your deeds. Would that make you happy either?” Iris continued explaining her point. “So, in a royally messed-up way, don’t you think this was as close to ‘justice’ as things could be? Your beloved died happily with you at their side without ever having to learn what you had done, and you being punished for your selfishness with… loneliness and whatever breakdown you’re having? I think you might know that, and can’t find it in yourself to force me to end your misery – at least partly.”

Iris had made her point and in all honesty was still hesitant to say anything further, just in case, and the two were left in silence as the lich turned back towards the sky instead of trying to make claims of its own. As the snow slowly fell, covering the footsteps made by Iris when she first carried Anastacia there, minutes passed with no sign of the simulacra coming to find them. Iris didn’t know how much control a lich had over its thralls, but it was odd that the simulacra hadn’t been allowed to pass yet – she didn’t want to ask either, just in case the lich actually wanted some company after all. It may have deserved the self-inflicted nightmare, but a brief moment of distraction was surely just as justified. Anastacia gently snored in the small hole that had formed around her in the deepening snow, but showed no signs of waking up either – maybe for the better as well, as the lich seemed to avoid even looking at her.

Finally, after a while of watching the skies grow ever so slightly darker, the lich spoke again. “What you say comes from a place of naivety, from blindness to the forces moving behind every action and happenstance in this wretched world. You know not the malice this world bears for its inhabitants, from the most insignificant of insects, to the mightiest gods – there are no happy endings left for any of us. Whether or not I deserved my punishment is irrelevant, as it will come to all, in one form or another.” It stated in its usual bleak whispers. “Have you instilled a teaching of any value from out discussion? Have you found answers?”

“Maybe… For sure I’ve learned that immortality isn’t all that great.” Iris shrugged back. “Maybe something you said will help me in the future, I’m not sure either.”

“A rather practical take on my blight, but one I can hardly deny. You are not the type to strive for it, but it may well befall on you to stop the hand of some other before they repeat my mistake. There are no bargains worth taking, no trades acceptable, no cheating mortality without a cost. Many will scoff at you as you claim eternity to be a curse, but tell them that the immortal beings left in this world are but a fraction of the ones that have been, as without exception, every single one will turn to a desperate search for an escape – a search far, far, far more desperate than my search for immortality.” The lich agreed whole heartedly before slowly floating up from its seat while intensely staring at the clouds.

Iris couldn’t hide her curiosity any longer and turned to look at the sky herself. “You’ve been looking up for a while now, what are you looking for?” She asked.

“I am not searching, I was hiding…” The lich stated ominously. “But something has found us.”

Not a second later, a visible crack appeared high up in the sky but still below the clouds. Like the ice covering a lake in the winter, it quickly spread by first splitting the sky in two and then further shattering it as smaller cracks grew outwards from the first one. Moments later, when the cracks no longer grew, the first piece detached itself from between them. At first, it was hard to tell how big of a shard it was without proper perspective, but as the piece of cloudy sky barreled down like a shard of broken class for several seconds, its scale started to become more apparent. Finally hitting the ground in complete silence, without harming the branches it passed through and impaling itself deep into the ground without disturbing the snow, it was over two meters tall and almost as wide, but seemed to be paper thin.

As more pieces began falling, disgustingly violet miasma began spreading from the holes they left behind.