The shadow or shade lich is created by establishing another connection within the phylactery. Alternatively, the connection can be made within the soul of the would-be lich. The connection is made to the plane of shadows, hence the name of this subtype of lich. The shade lich has a connection to both the plane of shadows and negative energy plane.

This connection to the shadows allow the lich several additional abilities when compared to its more standard kin. The ability to turn the shadows of others against them, forcing them to fight with a foe of similar power to themselves.

The liches that made the connection through their soul create a phylactery or second phylactery within their own shadow. This shadow phylactery can fight alongside the lich as a partially real illusion of the lich. The lich is also able to revive their shadow phylactery if they were not currently dead at the time of its destruction. – The Path of Self Resurrection by Damû Rámaêri.

Adrian

The air feels colder as I rush at the undead, I do not know why K said to kill it quickly but she does have more practical knowledge on undead. Whatever words the corpse is speaking it makes my blood feel cold.

It is not a coldness of temperature but something else. I throw my spear wrapped in fire as I am approaching the creature. The spear breaks against the body of the undead and the fire did not burn as much as it did against the earlier zombies.

Not a standard zombie, warrior lieutenant? It does not have the tools that I would expect from a caster so at most it could be a spellsword, that does not explain the resistance to fire. A zombie animated as a skeleton warrior? Element infused perhaps?

The lieutenant draws the blade and flickers of fire flicker around it. Fire infused warrior lieutenant. Physical assaults will not be very effective, fire will be ineffective. Electricity won’t work. Frost fire? Maybe, but the base zombie would be immune so the variant could be.

K seems to be about to do something, I dodge a slash from a sword. At least the creature is slower than the Althaen soldiers.

“Don’t I’ll handle it.”

K stops, she will handle the base zombie. I don’t want her to spend her mana before we have to. Shotgun the zombie? That would do massive physical damage. Worth a try. I pull the firearm out of Void Cache and fire it into the zombie.

Holes are added to its armor, the arm holding the sword is now separate from the torso and dried blood and bits of rotting flesh fly around. The zombie is still moving towards me and so I put two more shells into it before it is in pieces in the street. Slow moving, and massive damage will still return them to rest.

I smile and end K’s regular zombie, I aim for the torso and destroy most of its body. K of course ran before I shot. I start reloading the shotgun while K states the obvious.

“We have been found.”

I nod, “at least his focus will be on us instead of our friends.”

She nods and I feel a chill, not from her actions but from behind me. I turn to see blood red runes etched into the bones of the lieutenant glow and the bones start to gather together. Shit, it is reanimating itself. That is not good.

The now skeletal fire warrior lieutenant assembles itself and the runes dim before releasing a burst of dark light. The skeletons of the slain zombies start to rise. My fire will not be as effective against bones, and I do not have a Sphere that I can do physical damage with to just smash and break the bones. Four rounds of 12 gauge is not going to be enough and my smaller bullets won’t do shit to this.

I’ll have to try frost fire against the lieutenant but I am not expecting too much from it. Should I use one of the damaged rifles as a club? No, too unwieldy. I throw a bolt of frost fire at the lieutenant only to see ice form and then melt on the bones. That is not going to be enough.

I need more time to figure something out. I need a way to harm them. Wait time. That could work. I twist the time around only myself to move faster. Everything in my perception slows down. The lieutenant is charging me, before he was moving faster than the Althaen soldiers now almost as slow as his prior zombie self.

This shifting of the rate of time is helpful, but I am finding it hard to hold. I need to work quickly. I pull not a weapon from my Void Cache but a blunt instrument, a hammer almost a mallet. It is not balanced for fighting but it is sturdy and meant to hit things.

The skeletons are moving faster than the zombies but nothing K shouldn’t be able to handle. I rush at the lieutenant and smash my weapon into the femur of the skeleton. I want to disable it if I can.

The bone does not break but I heard a cracking sound from it. The bones are harder than they should be, an effect from the animating forces? Perhaps some transmutations were done before the animation of the body? Not too terribly important.

A wave of fire is released at me, it accompanies another slash from the sword of the lieutenant. I can hear its blood chilling tongue rattling out of the now fleshless creature. I can feel the heat of a fire searing at my skin but my blood feels cold.

I duck under the sword, I would not have tried to do so normally but I am much faster than normal, relative to my opponent. The fire still sears me and I can smell burning hair. My appearance will be unacceptable until I fix it after this.

Why am I thinking about my now burnt hair? Stupid vanity. I will not be vain, regardless of the influence of dragon-me. I manage to break the left femur of the lieutenant but the skeleton seems to be relatively stable still. Supernatural support, of course it would have something like that. After all, how else could a skeleton be held together without its flesh?

I start to strike at it with the hammer as quickly as I can while still keeping a heavy force within my swings. I have no idea of the proper way to use a hammer in a fight but at least I am dodging the blade of the skeleton even if the fires still sear and hurt me.

I glance at K, she has reversed her sword, gripping it by the blade and smashing the skeletons with the pommel and cross guard. I think Tomas once explained that to me as a technique that was used in the middle ages to deal with opponents in plate.

I pay for my distraction with a shallow cut to my arm. The cut makes me feel weaker and the skeleton lieutenant seems to have been repaired a bit from whatever draining effect that it just did.

Wait, drain. Necromancy, negative energy. Death energy. I think there is some way I can deal with these undead much easier. I move away from the lieutenant, I will need a bit of space to buy me time.

The lieutenant chases me as I kite him a bit further away from K. I don’t want him chasing her when I attempt this. I feel a bit of relief when I stop accelerating time. This must also have an effect on my body, as it feels less stress all of a sudden.

I pour myself into Death and Fire, I need to find the energies that are within this creature. I find them, now to try something that could backfire. Both energies are flowing around within the undead, but they do not mix. They don’t even touch. I don’t think I could easily warp the flows into breaking but maybe I could damage them.

The lieutenant gets within melee distance before I manage to do what I am trying to. I got the flows of fire and negative energy to cross. I hear an ungodly scream that sounds as if one’s soul were being torn apart from the skeleton as black fire bursts from its bones. I jump away as there is a torrent of the black fire spreading out from the creature.

Soon it collapses and I turn to the other skeletons. Can I do something similar to them? I try to sense any energies within them but can only find the flow of death that I by process of elimination has to be negative energy.

The flow of their negative energy is slower, weaker and less extensive than the lieutenants was. I can’t actually see any of it but it just feels that way. Sensing things with my magic has always been weird, I just know what I want to find and if it is there to be found I then know about it.

I start rushing at the skeletons with my frying pan, their bones break and fall away under my swings. I wonder if I should try to sense the necromancer when we are closer. Maybe, but direction and distance are hard to tell. Maybe mixing it with spatial aim? I’ll experiment with that after solving our current problems.

The last of the skeletons fall and I give a smile to K. She returns it and asks a question.

“What did you do to that flaming lieutenant?”

“I messed with the energy inside it.”

“You can do that?”

“Some, that is what I meant when I explained the idea of you being able to deanimate the undead.”

“Why didn’t you do that to the skeletons?”

“They didn’t have two types of energy. I don’t know how to shift them into falling apart under their own power.”

K frowns, but she believed my changes to reality as possible. Maybe she’ll figure out how to deal with the undead that only have negative energy within them. I wonder if other energies would work for what I did. If it was a cold subtype would it still have been destroyed?

I continue my musings as we travel towards the graveyard. Much more carefully than before. It is better if we do not run into another of the patrols, no need to give more chances of noticing us than need be.

After an hour or two we are able to get in sight of the cemetery without fighting another batch of undead lead by a lieutenant. I considered taking out one of them, but it did not have a second type of energy I knew how to manipulate.

The gate to the cemetery is guarded by some of the larger undead that I’ve seen. Zombified versions of those hairy giant goblinoids. I haven’t seen them in the light yet so I am unsure what they are specifically.

K and me circle around the cemetery but fail to find another way of entry. The stone wall is too high to easily climb, and while I can fly over it I would not be able to carry K in my dragon form.

“Looks like we will have to fight our way through.”

K seems to be thrilled at the idea. Has she always been this much of a battle junkie? She always did have a smile on her face during all the fights that I have seen her in so maybe. I have no idea how many undead are going to be active nor where the necromancer is other than that he should still be here within the graveyard.

“No, there is another way. I’ll boost you over the wall and then fly.”

K frowns but allows me to push her up and help her climb over the wall. Now to shift and fly over myself.