Giichi the halfling looked up from his workbench at the commotion in the hallway. It was not unusual for new prisoners to put up a fight, of course. Such was the nature of prisons and those normally incarcerated within. But the struggles of this one had a different auditory flavor than was usually heard down here. And, he realized after a moment’s concentration, the struggles were drawing nearer.

How annoying.

Giichi sighed and delicately set aside the mana etcher he’d been working with before rising from his chair. To look at him, anyone would be forgiven for thinking his careful movements were due to advanced age. The halfling looked like he must be close to 90, his short hair bone-white and his skin papery and spotted with age.

In fact, he was closer to 300 years old. And those slow, measured movements were due entirely to personality and conscious choice rather than any ailment or age-related malady.

“Another one,” he muttered to himself as he moved towards the heavy iron door that was the entrance to and exit from the only area in the Calcified Fortress that truly held any interest for him. “And just at the crucial juncture. Sometimes I wonder if the lich does this to me on purpose.”

He neither received nor expected a response from anyone, as he was the only one in the heavily-soundproofed room. He often spoke to himself. Except perhaps for Araxesendenak, there simply was no other being worth wasting his breath on in the fortress.

The iron door swung open on greased hinges underneath his palm, opening onto his other work room. This one, if pressed, he would admit held a small degree of interest for him, if for no other reason than the work he performed here was related tangentially to his studies in etching. But where two hundred years ago the work had been interesting and new, now it was stale and rote. Araxesendenak never asked for anything new to be discovered or tested, merely demanded that he recreate the same patterns over and over again on different prisoners.

Still. Aside from those semi-regular chores, the lich by and large left him alone to pursue his art, so he would not grouse. Overmuch.

He was just removing the necessary tools from the large wooden cabinet opposite the chair in the center of the room when the door to the hallway swung open. He did not turn at the noise. Instead he finished his task, gathering the needed mana inks and etching and tattooing needles. He did not rush. He never rushed. Not for a prisoner, a guard, Lich King Araxesendenak or the Seven Gods of the Eastern Waters themselves. Haste was (Something like wasteful). Calm, methodical movements, slow and steady, that was the way things got done.

So when he turned from the cabinet he found a young human man already seated in the chair, clearly paralyzed from some magical means. The boy wore a curious mix of heavy work-like leathers and fabrics, sturdy boots, and a pair of copper-rimmed spectacles that looked so out of place that they actually got a second look from the halfling as he bundled his tools over to the little worktable next to the chair.

And there was Lich King Araxesendenak himself standing beside him. Cuthbert too was there, as unassuming and as quietly dangerous as always, in the corner of the room.

“Your majesty,” Giichi said, bowing from the waist at the precise angle of a master craftsman to his patron. “This is unexpected.”

“It is an unusual case, Giichi,” Araxesendenak said with a wobble of his crowned head. “This one requires… special attention.”

That made Giichi’s whitened eyebrows climb his forehead. “Indeed?”

“None from you, I’m afraid,” the lich continued, and Giichi felt most of his interest die with those words. “The standard suite of tattoos is all that will be required. But I’m afraid I shall have to look over your shoulder on this one. This particular guest is… problematic.” The lich patted the human’s shoulder affectionately.

“Very well,” Giichi repressed the sigh of annoyance seeking escape past his lips. “I shall need the paralysis removed once I get the restraints on, of course. Any active magic may interferer with the tattoos as they are inscribed.”

Araxesendenak nodded once and snapped his fingers. The skeleton guards on either side of the human stepped forward and held down his limbs while two more began fastening the heavy leather and metal restraints attached to the arms and legs of the chair. Within seconds, the youth was properly cinched down and would be completely unable to move—

The paralysis was removed, and at the exact moment the human snapped his head forward, driving it hard into a skeleton’s nasal ridge. Bone shattered and the skeleton stumbled back, hands flailing. One bony appendage swiped at the youth’s face, scoring a trio of bloody scratched across his cheek right to the bridge of his nose, and sending the spectacles skittering onto the floor. Giichi watched their arc, and was mildly surprised when they did not shatter on impact. Magic flared in the boy’s eyes, and one finger tapped hard onto the chair arm, the wood beneath disintegrating from the magically-enhanced blow.

Giichi ignored the fracas as more skeleton guards swarmed into the small room to restrain the youth. Instead, he eyed the spectacles on the stone floor at his feet. They ought to have shattered, but they hadn’t. So clearly they were reinforced somehow. He stooped and plucked them from the ground, then blinked as his aged fingertips brushed over the copper, and the mana runes etched there.

Well now, what have we here?

He glanced up. None of the others were watching him, not even Cuthbert, who always seemed to see everything. So, on a whim, Giichi slipped the spectacles into a pocket of his robe. He would examine them later. After all, he reasoned, even a master of the craft could potentially learn something new from studying another’s work.

* * *

“I suspect you will have to have your minions hold him down, your majesty,” Sam heard the wizened halfling say. “This one is quite feisty, isn’t he?”

“Not for long, Giichi,” Araxesendenak said, growling. “That, I can promise you. Cuthbert.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Sam didn’t see what the other man was doing. He was too absorbed in trying to grab the belt knife off of the closest skeleton. He fought and scrabbled for it, fingers reaching. Felt the hilt under his fingertips. Stretched…

And suddenly he was flung back against the iron chair like a ragdoll. Small hands, like steel shackles wrapped in plush velvet, gripped his wrists and forced them gently but inexorably onto the metal armrests. Those same hands held them there, and though he put all his strength into it, he couldn’t budge them an inch.

He turned his head, and found himself looking into the quiet gaze of Cuthbert, who seemed to be neither straining nor unduly concerned as he held Sam’s hands down like God himself had decreed it should be so.

“I shouldn’t bother trying to break free,” Araxesendenak’s snide voice came from somewhere behind him even as the remaining skeletons piled on and secured his feet. “Cuthbert’s grip is surprisingly strong, considering his size.”

“Thank you, my lord,” said the little man, neither raising his voice nor exhibiting any true emotion at the remark. “I live to serve.”

Sam’s brain whirled, a storm of emotions slicing and shrieking inside his mind with everything that was happening. Unable to fully process it all, he fell back on his default settings. He turned to look at Araxesendenak and curled his lip into a derisive smirk.

“So, what’s your end game here, bonebag?” he asked. Not his best insult, of course, but given the circumstances he found it cheered him up at least a bit. “Finally got me in your clutches? All one of me? Sent whole armies and ancient war machines after me? Doesn’t this seem a little overkill to you?”

“Not at all,” Araxesenednak flipped a hand while the old halfling brought his little worktable laden with ink and needles over beside the chair again. “One must meet challenges to one’s rule with all the force at their disposal, after all. Helps keep down other revolutionary elements that may be waiting in the wings.”

“Challenges to your rule?” Sam scoffed, trying to ignore the halfling as he drew ink up into a syringe. “I never once challenged your rule.”

“You attacked me bodily with your hammer,” Araxes said. “Near to blew my spine out of alignment. I would call that a challenge to my rule, wouldn’t you?”

“And then you killed me,” Sam shot back, struggling now as the halfling filled another ampule with that strange glowing ink. “That makes us square, shouldn’t it?”

“I died in that cave-in as well,” Araxesendenak said flatly. “But yes, it might have been sufficient to assuage my ire, if not for one small item.”

And then the lich was there, leaning over and into him, those eyeflames bare centimeters from his own eyes, burning red and bright with hate.

“Seven days, Tolliver,” the lich hissed. “Seven days I spent within the skull of that wretched copy you created of me. Seven days a prisoner in my own skull, watching you berate it, beat it, kill it, change it. Over and over and over. Seven days of watching you, Tolliver, treat a version of me as if I were some pissant little level-one mob.”

“What?” Sam stared. “What are you talking about?”

“Whatever foul magics gave birth to your orboid strumpet and cast a new copy from my own mould,” Araxesendenak growled, “also forced me to reside within the copy’s mind, a passenger to all its thoughts and decisions and actions and experiences.”

Sam stared, and a montage of mental images began playing across his inner eye. Him beating Araxes into a pulp with his hammer. Char attacking the copy and killing it stone dead. Rashun chasing him with an axe. Countless insults and arguments and just plain intimidation to get the lich-copy to do what was needed…

And Araxesendenak, probably the oldest and most powerful single entity in the world today, had experienced every second of it.

Shit.

“I don’t suppose an apology would be enough?” Sam said, summoning up a watery grin.

“No, I don’t suppose it would,” Araxesendenak agreed. “Giichi.”

“Ready, your majesty,” the halfling said from where he stood on Sam’s left.

“Proceed then,” the lich said, stepping back but never looking away from Sam.

“Hey wait,” Sam started struggling again, but between the half-dozen skeletons holding his legs and Cuthbert—whatever the hell he was—holding his arms, he could do little more than wiggle his butt against the iron seat. “What’s he doing?”

“Giichi,” Araxesendenak said as the halfling moved into position, “is a master of his craft. An interest which you share, as I understand it. Mana etching and engraving. When I discovered him… What was it now, Giichi? A hundred years ago?”

“Three hundred, your majesty,” the halfling said.

“Really? My, time does fly. At any rate, when he came to me asking for a job, he explained to me that he knew the secret of engraving mana runes onto flesh.”

“That’s impossible,” Sam said, struggling more as the needles were laid out on a tray. “Mana runes can only be etched onto inanimate objects.”

“Thank you for explaining the basics of my craft to me,” the halfling said dispassionately.

“That’s what I thought too, if it makes you feel any better,” Araxesendenak said almost cheerfully. “But no, it turns out he truly has devised a method for it, though he will not share it even with me, his employer and the man who ensures his continued longevity in order to practice and refine his art.”

“My secrets are my own, your majesty,” the halfling said with finality.

“Of course, of course. So,” the lich continued as the halfling selected a needle, attached a vial of ink to it, and bent down over Sam’s trapped arm. “What he has devised are a series of what I have taken to calling ‘Prisoner Tattoos. Several magical mana inkings that have a variety of interesting effects. This first one…”

The lich cut off at Sam’s hiss of pain as the needle began jabbing into his flesh.

“Ah yes, I suppose I should have mentioned that the process also stings like a swarm of irate yellowjackets on a whiskey hangover. At any rate. This first one will prevent your mana pool from regenerating naturally. I find it so much easier to deal with prisoners when I don’t have to be mindful of them hurling fireballs inside their cells. And it’s much cheaper than anti-magic prisons. Those things are beastly to keep properly maintained, almost as bad as teleport rooms.”

Sam closed his eyes and set his jaw. The pain was coming in fast sharp red-hot jabs as the needle worked into and along his upper bicep. Gods and devils, it felt like he was being stabbed with spears!

“The first tattoo,” Araxesendenak said, starting to sound like an old professor Sam had had once, “is merely a maintenance tattoo. It ensures that you will be unable to access the messaging system until it is removed or I allow it. After all, we wouldn’t want you calling out for help from your most annoyingly-resourceful friends should you somehow manage to get outside the range of my palace’s dampening field, would we?”

Sam felt his teeth grind together. No. Of course. Wouldn’t want that. He squeezed his eyelids together and tried to console himself with visions of using the lich’s skull as a chamber pot.

“It’s actually a rather interesting mechanism,” Araxes continued cheerfully. “Most message blockers just prevent you from accessing the system, returning an error message. This one prevents you from even connecting to it at all, and returns a ‘user unavailable’ message to anyone trying to contact you. It toys with the emotions most wonderfully, I’ve found.

“At any rate; the second tattoo,” Araxsenednak continued happily, “is a bit more complex—“

The halfling gave a heavy snort but said nothing.

“—and has a two-fold purpose. First, when finished, it flash-empties your remaining mana pool. Then it activates and prevents you from regenerating mana naturally. No abilities, no inconvenient spells rattled off in the bowels of my fortress… Just you, alone, with nothing except your physical prowess to keep you busy.

“The third is similar to the second, except that it merely prevents you from regenerating health naturally.”

Sam’s eyes came open at that, just as the halfling’s needles hit a nerve and he let out an explosive breath, unable even to flinch from the pain thanks to Cuthbert’s steely grip. He looked up to see Araxesendenak’s eyeflames boring in on him.

“That’s right boy,” the lich’s voice went quiet and menacing. “No mana. No way to regain health. No communication with the outside world. You are stuck here, subject to my mercies, for as long as I deem it so. And, when I deem it proper, I will find out how to kill you so you stay dead.

“This,” the lich leaned forward until he once more loomed above Sam like a gravestone, “I promise you, Tolliver. You will die here, and I will make it happen.”

Sam opened his mouth to shoot back a retort, something to wipe the smirk off the damned lich’s face. But the halfling started in on the second tattoo, and all that came out was a scream.

And the screaming didn’t stop for quite a while after that.