“The Watcher will see you now, honored immortal.”

Bartholomew put his tea down on the waiting room’s side table and rose. The spindly-looking clerk was likely an immortal in her own right, if the mass of small soulstones that she wore on her fingers and around her neck were any indication. That meant that her formality wasn’t strictly necessary, but he supposed it came with the position.

He faced the woman squarely and executed a formal bow, claws tucked inward, pointed away from the woman to signal submission, returning the gesture. “Thank you for your consideration, administrator Eleanora.”

Her position as clerk to the ruling Elder made her potentially the single most politically powerful un-ascended person in the entire city – something that most of the merchants, politicians and bureaucrats who walked into this office likely didn’t understand. A bit of flattery could only help him here. If not today, then perhaps in a year – or a century.

She scooped up the half-empty teacup and turned away, but not before Bartholomew caught her suppressing a small smile.

“Go on, the Elder has a very busy schedule and does not like to be kept waiting.”

Turning to face the ornate door, Bartholomew’s heart began to thump harder. His soulstone was tucked into his inside jacket pocket, effectively hiding the glowing tendril of essence that now connected him to it. That damned elf! While Weland clearly hadn’t turned him into a lich—he hadn’t died, after all, and so far as he could tell, and he hadn’t suddenly manifested any sorcerous abilities— the creature had thoroughly corrupted the soulstone with his essence.

If the elder were to notice, it could end badly for him.

He shook his head. It didn’t matter now and it was too late to change his mind. He’d already called in some very big favors around the city to get this audience so quickly. The risk was necessary if he didn’t want to lose decades of progress. And besides, risks were meant to be taken. Steeling himself, he pushed the door open and entered.

The Watcher’s office was massive and designed to impose. The back wall was entirely made of glass or perhaps crystal, letting in the light of the sun from far above. Due to its location, partway up the needle-like tower that sat at the heart of the city, it also offered a dizzying view of the city below. The metropolis was built into, and up, the sides of an impossibly deep fissure—the Chasm for which the city was named. Far, far above the light of the sun blazed in, illuminating what looked like a burning crack in the stony sky.

Bartholomew, though, knew better than to stop to appreciate the view. His attention was focused on the desk at the center of the room, and the man who, against all decorum, was sitting on it, apparently meditating.

Ottomar, the current Watcher, was a Forebearer of the Amoa’dan who looked as if plucked out of ancient myth. He was an ancestor, to be sure, but not really one of them at all. His arms were shorter than a trogg’s, he was too tall, and his fingers ended in broad fingernails. He didn’t look like a human either—he was too pale, his eyes were too large, and his hair was colored what would seem an unnatural shade of red to a surface-dweller. Still, he looked more like them than he did like Bartholomew.

That was the work of the dead goddess, Amoa. When the new gods came, the story went, she sheltered her followers under the earth and made it their home—or rather, she made their children at home beneath the earth.

This walking anachronism had been there, thousands of years ago, so long that even their meticulous records couldn’t put a clear number to it anymore. This man would know exactly how long ago, Bartholomew was sure, but no elder had bothered to clarify the endless debates of Amoa’dan archaeologists in living memory. Perhaps he didn’t realize how much knowledge was lost, or he didn’t consider it important.

The Watcher’s eyes snapped open and focused on Bartholomew.

Remembering himself, Bartholomew bowed deeply.

“Honored Watcher Ottomar. Thank you for seeing me.” He kept his gaze down as the man scrutinized him. A moment later, he spoke.

“Up, young one.” he said, his voice surprisingly high pitched for such a large man. “He comes before us most urgently. We think it best if he made his report with due haste.”

The Watcher’s odd manner of speaking surprised Bartholomew briefly. It was generally considered ungracious to address someone in the third person, and it had been for nearly two hundred years.

Of course, it wasn’t that surprising that no one had cared to point out this change in propriety to the most powerful sorcerer in Amoa’dan society—and its absolute ruler by tradition, if not in fact. He certainly wasn’t about to.

Other Watchers made more of an effort to keep up with the evolving culture of their people, but those were currently convened in the Council of Elders, working with the two remaining gods to keep the caverns livable. It would be another century before Ottomar would rejoin the Council, relieving another Forebearer to watch over Amoa’s children.

Bartholomew took a breath and spoke. “I have discovered a Lich rampaging in the upper caverns. It has begun recruiting ghouls and begun experimenting to train wights, vampires, and were-creatures. It is building an army.”

Ottomar sat up at that, and kept sitting higher until he floated off the table, carried by a burst of wind essence that promptly deposited him on his feet.

“A lich? How interesting! And it plays with ghouls. Quite curious, indeed. Very unusual. Where did he find it?”

Bartholomew breathed a small sigh of relief. He had half-feared that the Elder wouldn’t believe him, or would simply ignore the threat.

Amoa’dan society detested liches, but its aristocracy, especially immortals, were notoriously risk averse. Most hid inside the city.

Ascension took millennia, and until that point an immortal was as likely to die of food poisoning or by falling off a ladder as anyone else. No one who hoped to make it would purposely expose themselves to risk. That attitude ultimately shaped Amoa’dan culture as a whole. As far as Bartholomew was concerned, it was his people’s greatest failing.

“It was camped at the Duskhaven stairwell when I left four days ago, honored Watcher.” he answered. Then, noticing the blank look that the Elder gave him, added, “The third coastal stairway.”, using the traditional Amoa’dan designation of the place. “By now, it may be raiding the human city of Duskhaven for human sources, or laying waste to the small civilized revenant settlements in the area.”

Ottomar raised an eyebrow and cocked his head slightly in consideration.

“Revenant settlements? In the upper caverns already? They must be spreading quite quickly, then.”

“Quickly?” Bartholomew furrowed his brow. “Not especially, honored Watcher. They began expanding out of the lower elemental caverns almost a hundred years ago, and new revenants began setting up their own villages as soon as the stronger settlers began to put down the local ghoul scourges.”

“Still, maybe…” the Watcher considered for a moment, “Very well. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.” He turned away, “honoring” him by using the second person, finally.

It was a dismissal, but Bartholomew needed more. He needed to know what was going to be done about the situation. He bowed and stepped back as if on his way out before hesitating as if having a sudden thought.

“Might I accompany you when you move to destroy the creature, honored Watcher? I have some local connections among the local revenants and may be of some assistance in finding it.”

“Local…? No, no. Not to worry. We will monitor the lich’s activities closely and I will bring it down personally if and when it attempts to move against us. A lich is not a true threat to us, and it may still be of some use.”

“What?” Bartholomew was stunned. “It will kill thousands of innocent people. If it raids the surface too aggressively, it might even trigger retribution from the Betrayers. They could send the Guardians…”

Watcher Ottomar floated up, landing serenely on top of his desk, legs folded as before.

“Just so. It is of no concern to us. Let the lich teach the humans why they should stay out of the Deep Paths. If it, or the human priests, cull the local ghouls and revenants in the process, then so much the better. The humans are the source of this infestation in our realm. Let them clean it up. They will not find us, nor can their petty priests harm us while I keep watch.”

Bartholomew didn’t trust himself to speak. He bowed again, and backed out of the room. This was a disaster. Allowing a lich to live for any reason was blasphemous in any case, but this would ruin his work entirely. He reached up to wipe the sweat that was suddenly beading on his forehead. Dazedly, he turned to leave.

“I trust your meeting was successful, honored immortal?” Eleanora said, interrupting his racing thoughts.

He looked up and found her watching him from her desk with an inscrutable smile.

Bartholomew managed a weak smile in return.

“It could have gone better.”

Her smile softened and she shrugged. “Ah. Well. The elder rarely intervenes on behalf of any citizen—even a private audience like this is rare. His style of governance best rewards those who help themselves.”

“Yes…” Bartholomew replied, thinking furiously. “Yes, I suppose I’ll have to do that.”

If the Watcher couldn’t be moved to do his duty in destroying the lich, then he supposed he’d need to find some other way to continue his research. Perhaps he could save a few lives while he was at it.

–-------

Charlie sat in the dark crypt next to Em, watching as one of the surviving soldiers tried to change a hastily-applied and crusty bandage on his arm. Another soldier moved to help him, holding up an unidentified essence crystal that glowed with a soft bluish light and reaching to unwrap another bandage that covered a large part of the man’s face.

“Don’t worry about that one.” He rasped. “I’ll wait for a real doctor for my face. Help me with my hand.”

Shrugging, the man complied, quickly and carefully unwinding the ragged bandage.

The low light didn’t offer a lot of details, but what he saw was enough to make Charlie wince when the bandage came off. The skin had sloughed off in places and was weeping blood. He didn’t know much about medicine, but he guessed the soldier would likely lose the hand.

Wealthy merchants and high ranking officers could afford advanced medical treatments to accelerate healing and prevent infection, but that kind of luxury wasn’t afforded common soldiers.

Everyone, soldiers, revenants and troggs were packed into the corridor leading from the crypt’s entrance toward the stairwell. There was plenty of room in the side corridors and rooms, but those were filled with the dead and decaying. For revenants like Charlie, the crypt reminded him of the horrible moment when he had woken up not so long ago in this very place, surrounded by the corpses.

He shivered.

He was supposed to be protected by the seven-pointed star that had been laid around his neck—by his devotion to the gods and his membership in the Scions. Instead, he’d been forced down into the bowels of hell itself.

Of course, the reality had failed to live up to what he’d been told, but the horror he had felt at the time was no less real for that. He was a different man now—a different creature entirely, really. But not a ghoul, or a demon. Maybe, if he could get back outside, back home, he would be able to show them.

Next to him, Em was leaning back against the wall, eyes closed. She’d been fighting back nausea for hours. Charlie knew there was nothing they could do for her besides wait—blast-related ear injuries were common in the military. Reshid could probably help, if he was still alive. If that massive blast before the lich’s firewall went up was any indication, though, it was probably wisest to prepare for the worst. If, he thought darkly, the lich and his friends don’t catch up and kill us all before those damned priests let us out of here.