The Lich Without a Soul Vessel

The signal was over ten li away. Evan didn't think — he simply moved. His body vanished and reappeared five li out, then vanished again. When he registered what had happened, he slowed for a moment. Short-range teleportation normally reached perhaps one li. Twice that in a single jump was new. Something had changed since he passed through Ortlando's spatial gate, since he'd glimpsed whatever fragment of spatial understanding the faith-force had shown him. He couldn't articulate it yet. It was more like a physical sense than a reasoned skill.

What he didn't know was that his spirit sea had quietly shifted. Where before it had held only the black lotus and the nameless cool current, a great tree had begun to take shape in the deeper reaches — dim still, barely formed — and around it the spatial fabric of the spirit sea itself curved and bent, becoming subtly elastic in ways it hadn't been before.

Three jumps, and he emerged in a stand of dense timber close enough to hear the fight.

"Just the three of you." The voice was young. Evan had never heard it before — but he'd expected that. Liches changed bodies. The voice was new; the signature underneath it was not. "A sixth-tier mage and two apprentices. You thought that was enough to bother me?"

"Did you kill those two villagers?" Emma's voice.

"They were commoners. I killed them. What of it."

"Then it is you." Emma's tone sharpened, but she didn't attack. She was buying time.

A good call. Evan's teleportation wave had already registered on the lich's senses — or would have, if not for the fact that the signal rocket's magical pulse was still fading through the area, its signature dwarfing his own. By the time he arrived and the rocket's echo had cleared enough to reveal a separate source, the moment had passed.

The lich laughed. "You think reinforcements changes anything? All three of you — die."

Black smoke poured up around it. Skeletons emerged from the cloud, bone knives in hand, surging toward Emma and the students. Above them, waves of hell bats lifted from the smoke in a dark mass and spread across the canopy.

Emma tore open a scroll. White light blazed outward — a sacred light technique, built to imitate divine-art holy light. Where the light touched the bats and skeletons, black smoke rose from them and they thrashed in the brightness.

Shel tore open his own scroll. Yellow light followed, and a wall of compacted earth rose from the ground, putting solid stone between the three of them and the assault.

Carpenter raised his staff and began chanting. "Lightning Bolt!" A crackling line of electricity wound from the tip and drove into the black smoke.

Lightning was theoretically one of the worst elements for a lich to face. Carpenter's problem was that he was a third-tier apprentice. The bolt dispersed the moment it entered the cloud, leaving a few cracks and pops before dissipating entirely. The lich looked at him.

Green light blazed in those eyes. Two grey-white rays lanced out.

Death Gaze.

The earth wall and the holy light absorbed most of it — they were still active, still providing coverage. But Carpenter was in the line, and enough got through. His vision dimmed and he made an involuntary sound, stumbling as he spat blood.

"Carpenter." Emma's voice went sharp. "Are you alright?"

He straightened after a moment, still breathing hard. "I'm fine. It's fine."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from NovelFire; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The lich laughed. "Lucky boy. Consider that a lesson."

Then a torrent of fire erupted from the treeline and expanded rapidly, sheeting across the area above the lich and rolling downward. The Flames Ascendant scroll — impressive in volume, not so impressive in actual power, but effective at spectacle. Even the lich flinched.

Evan had been in the trees. The scroll was his opening move, not his killing move.

The lich's skeletons turned. Blue-black flames kindled across them — and across the bats, spreading in a cold wave with no heat at all but carrying the sharp smell of sulfur. Hellfire. Evan recognized it from the signature immediately, and from that recognition confirmed what the trace in the cave had suggested. This was Boniface. The hellfire technique was new — learned since his last death. Not something Evan had in his own repertoire, because producing it required treating sulfur compounds through alchemical refinement and incorporating them into the body itself. The upside was considerable magical amplification. The downside was progressive physical alteration, pushing the lich's body further toward infernal anatomy. Boniface had made that trade.

The Flames Ascendant had drawn the hellfire response — which meant Boniface had identified it as fire-element and reacted accordingly, not realizing it was a scroll. When his hellfire-wreathed skeletons hit Evan's Flames Ascendant residue and the deception became clear, it was already too late.

Evan came through under his own black smoke, a counter-formation of undead pouring out alongside him — skeletons, and among them bone mammoth shapes that hadn't been part of Boniface's assault. The two undead forces met and tangled.

"You — back up," Evan said as he emerged, loud enough for Emma to hear. "I'll handle this."

Emma saw him come through the smoke and felt the knot in her chest loosen. She took Shel and Carpenter and moved. She didn't question why Evan was using a black smoke screen — she assumed it was death magic, which it was, and nothing about it seemed unusual.

The mammoth constructs had the weight advantage. Several of Boniface's skeletons went down under them. But the hellfire ate through Evan's bone constructs faster than ordinary fire would have — several collapsed into ash before they'd landed a blow. The lines held, roughly even.

Boniface's voice came through the smoke. "You're Nic—"

"Watch yourself!" Evan cut across him before the name was out.

Yin-Chill Strike, directed into the cloud. The grey column hit Boniface's black smoke and punched through — the physical component, and beneath it the soul-targeting secondary effect. Boniface's body had a soul vessel, which meant a direct soul hit wasn't going to end him, but it would produce exactly the thing Evan needed: a momentary stutter.

He got it. One second, maybe less.

His sword would have taken too long to draw. The cane was already in his hand. He crossed the distance in what felt like a single motion and swung it in the war hammer arc, weight from foot to hip to shoulder, the full force of the approach adding to the strike.

The contact was solid. Bones cracked — Evan heard them go — and Boniface's body left the ground.

Emma, Shel, and Carpenter had retreated perhaps a dozen steps. They heard Evan shout, then saw Boniface airborne, then heard the scream — involuntary, the body's reflex overriding whatever passed for volition in a lich — and then the crash.

Boniface hit the ground and it did nothing to him. A lich didn't feel the landing. He was already moving before the sound had finished — a hand gesture, a spatial contraction — and he was gone, a full li away.

Evan stood in the clearing he'd just emptied and took stock. Three teleportation jumps to reach Emma's position, then two spells once he arrived. His magic reserves were below half. Boniface, as best he could tell, still had most of his. Close-range engagement without magic was viable — Evan's sword-work was at the knight tier now, which should be enough to put Boniface down a third time — but only if he could catch him.

And Boniface, having just lost to Evan twice, had apparently decided not to let himself get caught.

He turned. "Stay here. I'm going after him."

He teleported again before Emma could respond. Her voice came after him — "Don't use teleportation!" — but he was already gone, and her reason for the warning would have to wait.

He felt Boniface's location. Not through any formal sensing technique — something more instinctive, a rough spatial awareness that had been quietly developing since Ortlando's gate and the brief encounter with the faith-force's view of how space worked. He couldn't name it. He couldn't replicate it on command. But it was there, and it was telling him Boniface had moved perhaps one li out.

He appeared at the edge of that range.

Boniface saw him arrive and immediately teleported again. Another li. Then stopped and held position.

Evan stood in the aftermath and did the arithmetic. Every jump was costing him more than Boniface was spending. His magic was falling. Boniface had learned from the last two encounters — he wasn't going to let Evan close again, not today, not when he was already running on instinct and Evan had just demonstrated he still had the faster hand.

Chase or release.