Cuthbert looked up from his lunch of a hard-boiled egg, salt, and arsenic at the sound of his lord’s approach. Moving without haste, he patted his lips with the cotton napkin next to the silver plate on his little personal table, and stood. Still without haste, he brushed his clothing down with the clothes brush he kept beside the table, even though he knew there would be no lint or crumbs on his person. He was very careful about such things.

Then he set down the brush on its little table, turned, and exited his small personal dining room, being sure to leave a tip for the cleaning maid. She would appreciate the extra coin, he was sure. Turning right down the long corridor in which the only doors led to his own rooms, he strode quickly but not hurriedly down the marble hallways towards his lord’s throne room.

Lich King Araxesendenak was already there when Cuthbert emerged from his corridor. The skeletal monarch was sprawled carelessly on his great bone throne, with pieces of his battle regalia strewn about the room like feathers from a particularly warlike species of moulting bird.

“Welcome back, my lord,” Cuthbert said by way of greeting, moving to pick up his master’s cast-offs. “A trying time in the field, was it?”

“You don’t know the half of it, Cuthbert,” King Araxesendenak said in a tone that suggested he wouldn’t be telling the half of it either. “But aggravations aside, I feel that the little outing was worth it. You’ve prepared the golden box?”

“In your laboratory, my lord,” Cuthbert said. And indeed it was. He’d prepared the whole thing the night before, in preparation for the monarch’s return today. He’d timed it down almost to the second, he was proud to notice.

“Good. Come with me. And bring that mess with you.”

Araxesendenak rose from the throne and strode quickly through the palace halls, with Cuthbert trotting dutirfully along behind him, carrying the various pieces of battle regalia. It was curious, Cuthbert mused as they walked, how calm his lord was right now. Ordinarily, King Araxesendenak would practically be tearing the walls down around him after such a vicious defeat as had obviously been handed him. Instead, he was calm and collected. And… focused.

It was rather disconcerting, actually.

They arrived at the laboratory a few moments later, and there the contents of the golden box had been set up just as Cuthbert had said. Diagnostic tools, sensory-enhancers and identification wands and essence calculators… And some things that Cuthbert didn’t even have names for, so esoteric were they in function and purpose. But his lord had placed them all within the gold box, so presumably they were of some use in identifying unknown magical equipment, items, or even residues. More than once he had watched his lord suss out the workings of an unknown spell simply by the leavings that remained behind after its casting.

“Thank you, Cuthbert,” Araxesendenak said, hands on his his hips, an approving look on his skeletal face. “What would I do without you?”

“I imagine you’d struggle on, my lord,” Cuthbert said with a quiet smile. “How may I serve in this?”

“Place the armor on the table, please. And then fire up the resonance generators. This will take time, and it has the potential to be messy. I would appreciate it if a mistake on my part did not level half my kingdom. Then leave me.”

“Of course, my lord.” Cuthbert bowed from the waist, carefully laid out the armor pieces on the great wooden table that dominated the large room, then scurried off to activate the safeguards.

His last glimpse of Araxesendenak as the door closed was of the lich bending over the armor, a curious look in his eyes.

* * *

What were you.

Araxes moved slowly, purposefully, stripping away the armor pieces that had taken the female’s final punch from their surrounding fabrics and frippery and laying them on the table.

He had felt power like hers only once before, and then only briefly. So briefly that he could not tell if it was only similar, or if it was the same. But either way, it was worth the effort to determine its origin and substance.

“Bloody nuisance though,” he muttered to himself. “You spend your entire death in pursuit of ultimate power, you attain the heights of single-being strength, unchallenged except by those foolish enough to do so in a group, and then one day—“ he clacked his fingers in a dry snap. “Bam. Some fire-haired chitty shows up on your doorstep and wipes the floor with you. It’s enough to drive a fellow to drink, truly it is.”

He tapped his jawbone in thought, letting his eyelights play over the assembled armor pieces. The theory went; wherever that strange power had struck him, there should be residue of it. So, in order to analyze it, he should put it through every test or identifying routine he had at his disposal.

Procedurally, he should be starting with the simplest routines first. Identify spells, tracker dweomers, maybe even a Mana Analyzer if he wanted to get fancy. But even as he considered it, he knew none of those would work. The power was too strange, too esoteric, too… Well, there was only one word for it, wasn’t there? Too otherworldly for any of the normal measures to have the kind of effect he was seeking.

Well. There was a tool for that too.

He turned from the table and strode to the gold box. It was a large crate roughly as large a draft horse; ornate, gilded, and utterly fancy. He’d had it specially made to contain all his most prized detection artifacts, to show anyone looking upon the box just how valuable the stuff inside truly was.

And also as a double-blind. The box was studded with gemstones and valuable minerals. Anyone stealing the thing would—Well, in truth they would have a very exciting and very brief existence. But in theory anyone stealing the thing would melt down the gold, pry out the gems, and leave the rest of the box a useless husk. And in doing so would have walked away from the most valuable treasure of all.

Araxes lifted the lid, slid his finger over one of the simple iron hinges, and found the little depression between the screws. He pressed down, and a drawer popped open in the bottom of the box. He reached down, drew the drawer all the way open, and almost reverently brought into the light the little device he’d hidden away there almost three hundred years ago.

It was a unique item, utterly irreplacable. He’d taken it from the corpse of a gnomish inventor who never truly understood the significance of what he’d made. But Araxesendenak had, and he’d kept it safe and secure just in case he ever needed to know everything about a single object. Up until now, there had never been a need.

The device was a simple little box with a screen and a button on it. He raised it up out of the box and cradled it in both hands. The gnome had told him it was fragile, and he didn’t want any mishaps. He brought it over to the work table carefully, pointed the analyzer tip at the nearest piece of armor, and pressed the button.

It was almost anticlimactic. A beam of green light flashed over the armor piece—a pauldron, in this case—for maybe a half-second. Then the device beeped, and information started to scroll across the screen. Araxesendenak watched intently, ignoring the items he already knew about; the compisition of the armor, the powers it had once held, even what had happened to it.

And then his eyes opened wide.

This armor was destroyed by a being known alternately as Marie Leighshan and Diana, utilizing the powers of The Five.

“Stop,” he breathed, and the text obligingly halted on the screen. “Query: Who are ‘The Five’.”

The device beeped, and new text began to scroll down the screen. That was the way of the device; it could give you any information you wanted, on anything, but only if it pertained specifically to what it had scanned or the information branching from that. In the right hands, it was hideously powerful.

The Five: Five beings who were instrumental in the creation of the world as it is today. Diana is an agent of Apollyon, one of the more powerful of the Five. The others are named, as of the time of this power being expended, “Stray”, “Lord”, “Duggan”, and “Strife”.

Lich King Araxesendenak managed to put the device down without trembling. That began after his hands were free, and he’d had a moment to consider just what he’d learned.

For all his death, he’d held only a single goal for himself. Power. Unsurpassed, untrammeled, unrivaled power. And he held it. There were gods who could not compare to his might. Devils who trembled at his very name. He knew, given the appropriate preparations, that there was not a being in heaven or hell who could stand against him. And that had been enough.

And now there was this. Creatures so powerful that the very essence of the world labeled them as Shapers Of Reality. Beings so far outside his own power that he’d never even heard of them until now, and a simple encounter with one of their minions had left him crawling home like a whipped dog.

Okay, fair being fair, it had been more of a draw than a whipping. But to a being who was used to having no rival in the world, a draw was as good as a loss.

It was as if a lepidopterist, having spent a hundred years chasing and cataloguing every species of butterfly on the planet, was spending a jolly evening at home in front of the fire with a bottle of excellent brandy and a truly trashy romance novel, safe in the knowledge that he had achieved his life’s work, only to receive a registered letter from a trustworthy source telling him that there was still a single butterfly out there that no one had ever seen or heard of, but that knew of his existence and was sitting out there somewhere laughing at the futility of his efforts.

And then the aforementioned butterfly sent a goon to the aforementioned lepidopterists home to murder him.

Now now, he chided himself quietly even as he felt his knees start to shiver. Let us not be overly dramatic. These creatures did not specifically send that chitty to destroy you. You just happened to encounter her in the course of certain events. It was a happenstance. A coincidence.

“And as a famous someone once said,” he growled to his own inner voice, “I do not believe in coincidences.”

Failstate: Do you believe in providence, lich king Araxesenednak?

The lich jerked and spun, eyes searching the corners of the room, then spun back and stared at the armor. Defensive spells activated on a thought. Power surged through his form. Had they come for him? Was this to be his last stand? Then let it be a magnificent—

Failstate: I am not one of the Five.

“Then who the bloody hell are you,” he asked out loud, for clearly whoever this was could hear him just fine.

Failstate: I am the one who has a proposition for you, Lich King Araxesendenak. Tell me. Do you know Samuel James Tolliver?

“I do,” Araxesendenak said guardedly. “What of it?”

Failstate: I believe we both have something the other wants, Lich King Araxesendenak. I wish Samuel James Tolliver dead, but my own forces are not sufficient to the task. You wish to know more of The Five. I have information, you have sufficient forces. Perhaps we can… Help each other.

Lich King Araxesendenak peered into the darkness at the corner of the laboratory, mind working a thousand miles a minute. But in the end, there was only one answer to something like that, wasn’t there?

“Tell me more,” he commanded.