The Lich Without a Soul Vessel

Evan had no idea what had happened behind him. For the moment, no one was following. He checked once more, confirming nothing was watching him, his faint sight showing everything perfectly ordinary around him. Still, something nagged at him, some sense of wrongness he couldn't quite place. He shook his head and layered on a Levitation charm — a wind spell — triggering the array in his bracer to stir up a small whirlwind. Even now, it struck him as strange that so modest a gust could lift a body weighing several dozen kilograms with such ease. The mysteries buried in magic were worth pondering, even now.

The black cat trailing a short distance behind him watched with visible confusion. This was an empty, abandoned house — what business did he have here? It saw Evan drift up through the skylight on the roof using Levitation, and without hesitation, the cat sprang up the wall in a streak of black, landing on the roof and creeping toward the skylight to peer inside.

A dark red scorching ray flared inside the room. The cat rolled its body and became a woman in black, just rising to spring away when the roof burst open with a crash. Evan appeared through the hole, his face like a thundercloud. "Who are you?"

Another woman emerged through the skylight beside him — Lidis. Evan had sensed something wrong but hadn't spotted the tail; Lidis, though, had caught sight of a dark shape peering in through the skylight and, without thinking twice, fired off a scorching ray. Evan glanced back just in time to see a cat flicker and vanish.

No ordinary cat could have dodged a scorching ray like that. He understood at once — a shapeshifting spell. Druids were the ones most skilled in that art, living as they did among forests and wildlife, taking the forms of bears and deer to move as friends of nature. But shapeshifting wasn't exclusive to Druids; certain witches practiced it well too. Among mages, though, almost no one bothered with it, and since this world's ability-users were overwhelmingly mages and knights, it hadn't occurred to Evan that a cat might actually be a transformed person.

The woman showed no sign of alarm at being caught. She laughed, coy. "So you're Evan Wang. Not as impressive as I'd heard. You wiped out two major gang headquarters last night — is it really so strange that the Order Keepers' priestess would take an interest in tracking you?"

"Priestess Rose, of the Order Keepers?" Lidis exclaimed, emerging fully through the skylight, startled by the name.

Rose's gaze landed on Lidis as though she'd expected exactly this. "So you're Lidis. I'd heard that pervert Holred took you. Seeing you here now, it seems you've been rescued after all. And the other one — Raight — must have been saved too, then?"

"You knew they'd been captured?" Evan asked, already understanding what that meant. So James really did know. It was time to close the net.

"As high priestess of the Order Keepers, is it really so remarkable that I'd hear about it? Innocent people die in Burk Town every day. Nothing unusual there," Rose said, catching Evan's meaning perfectly well, her tone laden with implication as she paced along the rooftop, seemingly unconcerned by either of them.

"Burk Town is nothing but a minor settlement that's angered Hollingburton. That's more than the lot of you can weather. It's a dangerous thing, having ambitions that outstrip your strength," Evan said flatly, his words carrying real weight — leaning once again on Hollingburton's name, as though he spoke for the school itself.

Rose's expression shifted faintly, though the darkness hid it well enough. In that moment, she finally understood what Evan intended — he meant to bring the whole of Burk Town under order. She had no way of knowing this wasn't yet Hollingburton's official policy at all, only Evan's own conviction — one he'd already begun pressing on Ortlando, stating plainly in his letter that Burk Town needed to fall properly under Hollingburton's banner, rather than remaining an isolated settlement caught between competing factions. This wasn't only about the current incident; it served Hollingburton's broader interests, since the Gael Mountains, dangerous as they were, still yielded a wealth of magical materials.

Evan knew Burk Town had stood this way for years for a reason, and he meant to use this opportunity to pry the whole situation open and see what lay beneath it — a resolve he'd settled on during the day. He had some sense, too, of why Ortlando had sent him here in the first place: to rattle the local powers without going too far. He gave a private, cold laugh. He intended to do far more than rattle them. He'd heard something similar had happened before — Hollingburton's people had come, resolved the matter, a couple of unimportant figures had died, and everything had settled back into place, as though the deaths of a few mages counted for nothing at all. Learning that had left Evan with a real distaste for how little this world valued human life.

He knew, of course, that he wasn't entirely innocent of the same charge — he had his reasons, at least — but a life was still a life, and something in that struck him as genuinely sad. This world's civilization hadn't reached the level of the one he'd left behind — though even there, people hadn't always lived up to their own ideals either. Still, at the very least, the principle itself had mattered.

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Evan knew this particular streak in him would bring no end of trouble down the road, but he couldn't rest easy without acting on it. People were strange that way.

Something in Rose flared murderous in an instant — the urge to simply kill Evan on the spot. But she understood, even in that flash of anger, that killing him would accomplish nothing, and would only hand Hollingburton a perfectly legitimate excuse.

The moment that killing intent rose in her, Evan somehow felt it, the hair on his arms standing on end. He gave a short grunt, matching intent surging in his own chest, a green glow flickering unbidden in his eyes. The two of them locked there for a moment, murderous will meeting murderous will, and Rose gave a cold snort, caught for an instant between two choices.

Evan made the choice for her. Death Gaze fired without warning, twin rays of grey-green light lancing from his eyes — the upgraded form of the spell.

Green vines burst up out of empty air, gleaming with a faint spiritual light, weaving themselves into a wall. The death rays struck the wall, and the vines withered and vanished at once. A figure flickered out from behind the collapsing wall, hands already transformed into claws, nails gleaming sharp as knives, moving with the speed of a lightning strike.

Evan drew his blade with a ring of steel, sword-force surging as the two figures crossed in the air, blades and claws ringing against each other again and again. With a burst of motion, the figure was thrown backward. Evan came out of it looking rough — several long tears now scored across the front of his coat — but unharmed. One of her claws, though, had snapped clean off. Rose retreated, tucking the ruined hand behind her back.

The instant she fell back, an incantation from Lidis sent an Explosive Fireball streaking toward her. Rose sprang upward, a hand sweeping out, and a green light flickered as a wooden spike shot forth with a resonant crack in the air. She flipped backward, her form flickering and shifting through several shapes before vanishing entirely into the distance.

Lidis moved to give chase, but Evan stopped her. "Don't bother. We weren't meant to move against her tonight — the timeline's just been pushed forward. Let's go."

James had sent his servant off, but unease had been gnawing at him the whole time. His brow furrowed, wondering what Evan might be up to now, as he waited anxiously for word. Then Evan returned — not alone, but with two figures trailing behind him. James's face went pale, though a thin thread of hope still clung on. "Lidis? Raight? My god — what's happened to you?"

His eyes flicked toward one of his servants, a silent signal. Evan caught the look and let out a slow breath. "James. Still planning to talk your way out of this?"

The three of them fell into a loose triangle formation. Jessica rose as well, positioning herself behind James, ready. Jaymes and Peter stood frozen, stunned by the scene unfolding in front of them, at a total loss for what to do, while the servants edged quietly backward.

Evan smiled faintly. Without anyone quite noticing when, a thin haze of black smoke had already risen behind the servants, skeletons taking shape within it. "No one move," Evan said mildly. "The skeletons won't much care who you are."

"How did you work it out?" James asked, and strangely, the sight of what he now faced seemed to steady him instead.

"Something was off about you the moment I arrived," Evan said, smiling. "A mage settling in to drink here might make sense, but you showed none of the despair that would usually go with it — that alone was strange. You've been here twenty years. By now you should have built up some network, and even without one, you shouldn't have been entirely deaf to news of six missing colleagues — and yet you never once mentioned them, though everyone outside your walls seemed to know. At the cabin, when the assassins appeared, you were far too composed — you didn't even raise a protective spell. Of the two dead attackers, you recognized both, I'd wager, but you only admitted to knowing one and claimed not to recognize the other. You wanted to point me toward Holred, didn't you?" Evan said with a smile.

James let out a laugh — one that carried no trace of actual amusement, closer to something breaking. "I never expected you'd really go after Holred last night. I assumed his strength, and your lack of proof, would keep you from moving against him. Turns out you didn't need a reason at all — suspicion alone was enough, wasn't it? Guilty or not never even entered into it. You already had Lidis and the others out last night?"

"Understanding it now does you no good," Evan said, correcting him. "I did say those things — and I suspect you read the letter I sent Hollingburton besides — but the truth is a little different. Any real chance to save someone, I'll take it. Time doesn't wait, and hesitating even a minute might mean regretting it forever. I gambled, and it paid off — both of them are safe. And today, I found out you sent word to the Order Keepers as well."

"So everything's already been calculated on your end. That letter was fake too?" James asked. "How did you even know I'd reached out to them?"

"You know better than anyone whether that letter was genuine. What mattered was never in it anyway — I sent word to Hollingburton through another channel entirely. Don't forget what I am. A necromancer with an Arcanist's rank has no shortage of ways to track a man." Evan answered easily enough, then dropped the real bomb at the end. "Where have you hidden the magical materials?"

"I hid them—" James started, then caught himself. "Ha. Why would I tell you that?" The words came out reflexively before the meaning of what he'd just said caught up with him, his composure shattering all at once. "You think you'll pull that secret out of me? Keep dreaming."

Evan let out an inward sigh of regret. He'd prepared this whole exchange carefully, never once raising the topic beforehand, only to drop it suddenly and let momentum carry James into an unguarded answer. It had almost worked.