I honestly hadn’t thought that my unskilled taunt would work. However, something seemed to have triggered in the lich, and his minions parted. I slowly smiled in disbelief that it would have been so simple as to just yell at him. Sure, my intimidation was high now that I was the Deathwalker, but I didn’t think I could intimidate the undead.

What I wasn’t ready for was the giant fireball that passed right between the lich’s now-parted minions. My shroud of protection soaked up the damage real fast, but the attack had been big enough that it washed up and over where I was protecting to burn off the hair of one of the people behind me.

The fireball also washed backward toward the lich’s forces, setting a zombie on fire. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to make me laugh until I heard the screams from the guy behind me that had black burns.

I pulled out a healing potion and passed it to the cook. “Get that in him.”

She nodded, took the potion, and stepped back, pouring the brew into the burnt man’s mouth. His blackened skin sloughed off as new skin appeared under it. However, there was nothing the potion could do for the man’s clothing.

I glanced back down the hall in time to see the boy lich give me a little wave. I waved back at him and reached out to claim him. The odd thing about lichs is that they are undead that are generally claimed by themselves because of the way they come into existence. Which, in a roundabout way, makes them free.

That, however, is the norm. They are usually not claimed because they are typically high enough of a level that others aren’t claiming them. However, whatever happened to cause Eric, the heir of the castle, to become the boy lich occurred when he was very low leveled. This meant that now that I was the Deathwalker and the owner of the Throne of the Deathwalker, I shot up enough levels that the battle of wills started.

This battle was more personal than trying to rip ownership of the undead from another necromancer. I felt him attacking me, which the undead never did. He was pounding on my mind in the same places that my mind was dealing with pain. So each time he hit, it ratcheted my pain up another notch.

Then I would launch into him, trying to drown out his will over himself. I was sure that he tried this with Renfry. It was because, unlike Eric, Renfry wasn’t claimed. He was oath bonded. His levels weren’t tied to me. Eric, however, had his levels tied to himself.

I was pounding on his ownership of himself and shaking his mind back and forth when he started to yell in my brain. The only person to have done that before was Blink. For just a moment, I stopped trying to claim him, and at that moment, he commanded all his undead to attack me. I felt a wave of force hit me as he sent out his mass command with my face, my location, and the desire to kill me.

I growled through the pain and grabbed his will with mine. “YOU WILL SUBMIT!”

He hammered back at me. “Never Usurper!”

I pushed back. “You have no claim. You’re just a minion! You gave up your rights when you did this to yourself!”

“I did this for the family! I had to protect the pass! You will not take it from me!”

I drew in a quick breath and then opened the doors to my mind. He fell right into the pain, the place where Sam had taken me so many times. That corner of my mind where everything bad that ever happened to me, where my fears lived, and the rest of my mind avoided.

I dropped him right into the darkest part of my mind. I gave him my rage from my pain from what his rats did to me. I relived my feet burning off and then my leg being eaten by the necklace. I have him the fireplace Sam stuck me in and ants, then I gave him all the spiders. I felt him trying to pull back as I pulled him in.

I hit him with the loneliness that I grew up with. No one understanding me or thinking as I did. All of the kids looking up to me, and the adults pushing me around. Then I gave Eric the horrid feeling of losing Kasidy and Blink. Even my thoughts that my two friends I had in Renfry and Irwin were gone.

The boy lich hit me with his memories of coming into the city. Orcs were in the pass thousands of them. Siege weapons everywhere, firing at the wall from inside the pass. People wanted to escape but couldn’t because they somehow had gotten a necromancer to hold out the plains side of the pass.

His patrol was the last set of reinforcements that got in. No one else came as the city starved. Then his father died at one of the walls the city was his to command—a twelve-year-old noble taking command in battle. The advisers didn’t want to listen. They wanted to retreat.

They talked about running and leaving the city. None of them would have dared to do so when his father ruled. Now, however, they wanted to run. The new ruler had only one option. He had to be powerful enough to keep the cowards from running.

Eric showed him going into the innermost treasure room and through a passage until he came out in a place that looked much like the Deathwalker’s throne room. There he picked up a staff from the throne and triggered an action.

Eric yelled in my mind. “I will stand for all time! The orcs still come, but I keep them out!”

I understood what he was saying. So then I gave him the memories of Ash. The loss. It wasn’t mine, but they were real, the emotions and the memories. I fed the boy lich the hate he had for the orcs. I showed how I stood against them and pushed back.

I yelled at his will. “I will crush the orcs and these merchants who strip your castle and kidnap people. They are as bad as the orcs!”

He thought back to me. “No, they give me the means to fight; they bring me weapons!”

I laughed both in his mind and out loud. “They have your phylactery. That’s the only reason they leave you living. They are using you, and you know it. First, you killed your city, and now you lost it to a group of traders!”

He sneered back at me in my mind. He was rummaging around in my fears and emotions, fighting them better than I did, as they weren’t his. Then he hit me with a low blow. He pulled up my fear of not knowing who I was.

It blasted me hard. I had thought that I had figured out who I was, that I had stopped thinking about not knowing my real name, that I couldn’t remember my name at all; I thought that I had accepted being Arn. I hadn’t.

I didn’t know who I was or why I was here. It was far worse of a thing than any bug or fire. Not knowing my name meant I didn’t know who I was. There was a reason that I had my name; it was a connection to the parents that I couldn’t remember. A tie to the person I was on Earth.

I heard the lich’s voice bouncing through my mind. “I am Eric Campbell of Westiral! My family has ruled this land for over a thousand years! You don’t even know your name. How can you hope to control me?”

My thoughts were bouncing around. He was right. I didn’t know who I was. I had no idea why I was robbed of my name but not my memories. I didn’t understand why I was in this place. Why I was brought through to this world or what the god a summer beer wanted me to accomplish. Worse than that, I had stopped viewing the dreams of the Ash guy as dreams. I might not be Ash or even Arn, but the memories of Ash were becoming mine.

With that thought, the lich’s laugh echoed through my mind again. “You don’t even know yourself! Your thoughts and dreams aren’t even yours! How can they be trusted?”

He was right. For all I knew, the reasons I was doing things were changing. I might have gotten into all the fights I did because of the dreams that I was having. Ash wasn’t me. He couldn’t be me. The dreams, at best, were the memories of the body I was in.

Then my mind tried to grab hold of what I looked like. I couldn’t remember what I looked like on Earth. I couldn’t understand why but all I was seeing was who I was now. The harder body and the cleaner skin.

Eric was right. My memories were subject to be questioned. I didn’t know my name and couldn’t even remember what I looked like. I tried to fight it and remember my birthday, but that also seemed to be gone. I knew that I didn’t know that, and I never knew that. I wasn’t born on January 1st, but my ID always said that. It was a lie because I never knew.

The lich pushed at my mind. “Submit to me, and I will tell you who you are. I will bring you into my family. I will teach you and show you the wonders of this world. Kneel, and you will have it all.”

I felt my knees giving out. The pleasure of just submitting was right there for me. I wanted to kneel and end the fight. The lich would make it all alright. Yet I knew that was wrong. That wasn’t me.

Ash might not be me. Arn might not be my name. But that didn’t matter because who I was wouldn’t let me give up. I was true to my friends. I would get out of bed late at night if needed to help a real friend. I would drive across the country to move those who I counted in that number. I might not know my name, but I knew who I was.

There wasn’t a chance that I would give in to the lich. He abandoned his family and turned on his city when trying to save them. He submitted to the half death. A broken life without growth wasn’t life at all. Yet that is what he chose and what he was asking of me. He wanted me to stop caring. The rules were simple in this. If I submitted, then I was his. If he submitted, then he was mine.

I growled in my mind. “No! I know who I am. I might not know my true name, but I know who I am. I am The Marquess of Westiral, Chosen of Bartholomew, the lord of the dungeons, Master of the trees, friend of the hunted, Keeper of the Eternal Tower, and I am NOT YOUR PUPPET. Now submit, and let me rule over this place. I will care for it, and I will raise it up out of the ruins that you have driven it to. I will break the orcs as they attack and bring the people back!

I forced through the link the memories of the pain that Renfry showed when he found out that Eric was a lich. His thoughts of Eric already being lost and no longer part of the family. I showed how Renfry’s bond was to me and how he no longer knelt to Eric. Then I showed the broken city and its damaged walls and empty streets.

I grabbed the lich’s mind and yelled. “You had your chance! Submit, and I will fix this!”

That was the last bit he could take. Through the fighting of my minions and his, the little lich ran at me. The funny thing was that the closer he got, the easier it was for me to fight for control. He was mad and not fighting my power anymore. He was just reacting.

As he charged, he fired Necrobolts at me over and over again. Then when he slipped past his line, things changed. Being that much closer, my mind and my will locked him down, and he stopped cold.

I opened my eye and stared at him. “You’re mine. Now order your minions to stop fighting.”

It was odd working through him. He had control of the minions he had raised, but I controlled him. It was tighter control than the merchant’s guild ever had of him. They only had his cooperation through threats. I had his devotion because I broke his will.

I looked down at the boy. “Send your minions to stop the guild team. As many ranged attacks as you have, that can get into the throne room. Release the Ropola and your other prisoners.”

Eric nodded and shook his head. “I am sending my ranged fighters now, master. However, the prisoners aren’t mine; I can’t even get close to them. Each one has a mana siphon placed on top.”

I nodded. “What about the Renfry? Can you release him?”

The lich looked at me for a moment. “The living undead?”

“Yes! Your old friend!” I snarled.

Eric nodded. “I should be able to.”

“From here?”

He shook his head. “I have the key to the chains.”

I sighed. “Then we need to hurry. We have to get them free and then finish the merchants.”

As we headed down the corridor, I asked. “Is there another way to get the portal?”

The lich nodded. “The Mirror Passage?”

“What the Merchant Guild came through?”

“Yes, master, there is a passage that I haven’t told them about.”

I grinned. “Good, that means we need to send a good chunk of your horde as quickly as we can that other way. I want to catch them from both sides and break them. Unlike you, they don’t seem to have much of a reason for me to keep alive.”

The woman that hadn’t been chained up spoke for the first time. “Good, they have a lot to pay for.”

* * *