The Wrong Kind of Immortality

He didn’t have to wait long.

A cloaked figure teleported into the chamber, the relevant wards glowing briefly as they identified the presence and approved the entry.

Orestis did not recognise the figure, but he had absolutely no doubt that this was Varra. And not because of the wards; even without them, there was no mistaking this fool.

In some ways, he is even worse than Maxim.

Varra had chosen a cloak of dark fabric with the hood drawn low, his face entirely obscured by shadow while long white hair spilled from beneath it on either side. The hem trailed across the stone floor at least a foot too long, and a faint haze of dark red energy drifted upward from the shoulders like smoke from a dying fire. It was the kind of outfit designed to say I am mysterious and you should be afraid.

To Orestis, though, the overall effect was painfully theatrical.

He barely finished the thought before Varra attacked. The lich had apparently detected him just as quickly as Orestis had recognised the theatrics.

Three spells came at him simultaneously.

One spell manifested as a piercing lance of necromantic energy, another targeted the soul directly, while the third sent a destabilising wave through the chamber. It was a layered assault targeting the body, soul, and mind simultaneously.

Orestis deflected the body attack with a flick of divine power and shielded his soul with a reinforced barrier. His body was too weak to tank necromantic energy, and his soul—no longer immortal—wasn’t something he was willing to risk. Especially not against a necromancer of Varra’s calibre.

The mind attack, though, he let that one land.

It broke against his consciousness like a wave against a cliff. Eleven centuries of accumulated mental fortitude made psychic assaults a non-issue.

Varra froze upon seeing how easily he defended against the attacks.

Skilled, but still inexperienced. The future Varra would have never made such a mistake.

Aside from that though, Orestis could not sense any signs of life from the spell he’d subtly layered into the surroundings.

So, he’s already undead.

Before the lich could attack again, Orestis said, “Relax, I’m only here to talk.”

Varra’s posture shifted instantly. The tension left his body as though someone had flipped a switch.

“Oh! Why didn’t you say so? What do you want to talk about?” he asked brightly.

With a mighty force of will, Orestis resisted the urge to facepalm.

The lich had always had a gullible streak. Even in the future, he had been quick to take things at face value, easily deceived if you used the right words. But centuries of getting tricked had at least built a thin shell of caution around the older Varra. This version, it seemed, didn’t even have the shell yet.

The naivety was raw, untempered, and frankly alarming for someone operating a secret necromantic laboratory.

Far worse, however, was the fact that the voice emerging from beneath the cloak was unmistakably female.

Looking more closely, Orestis realised the figure beneath the cloak was slight of build, with narrow shoulders and a distinctly feminine frame.

Orestis was about to ask whether Varra had somehow run out of male bodies when an unfortunate memory resurfaced. Back in the future, when the lich had been designing its replacement body, the sketches had all possessed subtly feminine features despite technically being androgynous. Apparently, that inclination had been there from the start.

He took a deep breath and said, “First, just to be certain—you are Varra, right?”

It was all but obvious at this point, but confirmation was worth having.

“Yes! That’s me.” The hooded head tilted sideways. “Wait—how’d you know? I look totally different in this body.” He patted his own cheeks through the hood. “I mean, completely different. You shouldn’t be able to tell at all.”

Orestis gave the lich a look so flat it could have ironed cloth. He decided to ignore the rest of the lich’s nonsense and said, “This is your lab, with wards keyed to your signature. It was a reasonable deduction.”

“Oh.” A pause. “Yeah, okay, that makes sense.” He sounded faintly disappointed that it wasn’t more impressive. “So—what did you want to talk about?”

Right. Let’s just focus on the main point.

“I’d like your help with a research problem,” Orestis said. “I have a curse—a complex one related to the soul and mind—and I want you to assist me in studying it.”

“And what’s the goal? Remove, control, alter, swap, transfer, or propagate?” he asked.

Orestis smiled. This was why he wanted to work with the lich.

Because naive or not, Varra was a rare genius. Orestis could always use the help of a competent researcher—especially now, with all the new information that had recently come to light. And unconventional minds like Varra’s tended to notice possibilities others overlooked.

Case in point: nearly everyone else would have instinctively assumed removal was the only possible course of action, without ever considering any other alternatives.

“Ideally, removal. Control is also acceptable as an interim. I doubt it is possible to alter this curse, but that is also acceptable. Swapping with a different one is only acceptable depending on the nature of the new curse.”

After all, if he got stuck with something just as annoying as the previous undying curse, or the current regression one, there was little point in swapping.

Orestis finished with, “Transferring the curse or propagating it is unacceptable under any circumstance.”

Giving someone else the curse of regression seemed like a good idea at first, but when he thought about it, he might end up like Maxim and be forced to regress with the primary carrier.

At least right now, he could decide whether or not to regress. If he lost control over that, he would be stuck in an endless cycle that was subject to another’s whims. That was absolutely unacceptable.

The lich rubbed its chin thoughtfully. “Hmm. The problem is interesting enough, I suppose. But what do I get in return? I should get something in return, right? You can’t expect me to help you for free, right?”

“Among other things, I can help you finish the construction of your new lich body.”

“Wait, how do you know about that?”

Two of the vats have prototypes floating inside. Does he expect me to assume they are random samples he picked up somewhere?

Instead of saying that, Orestis decided to simply point at the desk with the notes.

Varra’s reaction was immediate and absurd. He let out a strangled sound—something between a gasp and a strangled squeak—and physically launched himself at the work surface. He landed on the sketches and notes with his arms spread wide, covering them like a dragon guarding its hoard. If the dragon were the size of a house cat and deeply embarrassed, that is.

“You saw these?!” he asked, voice muffled by the papers.

“I’ve been here for a while,” he said wryly.

“Well...” Varra said, straightening up and smoothing his cloak with exaggerated dignity. “Since you’ve already seen everything... what do you think? Does it look cool? It looks cool, right?”

He held up the latest design sketch. The embarrassment had already been replaced by pride and excitement. “I was also thinking—after the main body is done—maybe having a glowing sigil constantly floating behind my head. And a few floating skulls for effect.”

“Yes, it’s all very intimidating,” he replied dryly, playing along.

At least he didn’t bring up the cloak of living flames.

“Let’s get back on topic, shall we?” Orestis said. “The help I offer. You need life force to construct your body. But your current methods are not as efficient as they could be.”

With those words, Orestis held up his hand and constructed the sigils for the refined life force collection method. It was Varra’s own technique, polished and optimised over centuries of iteration.

He held back from activating the spell, letting the sigils hover in the air between them so that the lich could examine it at his leisure.

Varra went still.

“That is my spell,” he said slowly. His voice had changed to carry something sharper, more focused. The naivety was still there, but now it was accompanied by an intensity that had been absent before. “It’s way more refined than what I have right now, but I recognise the structural foundations. That’s definitely my creation. How do you have that?”

Orestis wasn’t surprised about Varra recognising the spell as his own. Like most competent mages, he had developed original spells to suit his specific needs. Such spells always had their own unique elements.

He’d believe me no matter what I say. But if I say he taught it to me, then he’d likely spiral into a theory where I erased his memories after learning everything that I wanted from him. Not the ideal scenario.

Fortunately, Varra used to have his own theories about all sorts of things. And one of those provided a far more convenient starting point for the explanation.

“Have you come up with the alternate reality theory yet?” Orestis asked.

Varra gasped and pulled up straight. “You came from an alternate reality?!”

“No.”

The lich deflated visibly, his shoulders sagging beneath the cloak. “Then why did you bring it up? I got all excited for nothing!”

Orestis rolled his eyes, choosing to ignore his complaints. “My situation is somewhat similar. I had a magical accident that sent me to the past. In the future, we worked together. I learned necromancy from you.”

“That explains the spell,” Varra said, recovering quickly. “You got it from future me.”

“Yes. And I’m offering all of your future knowledge as part of our arrangement.”

“Wait.” He raised a hand. “Don’t show me any more.”

Orestis raised an eyebrow.

“I mean, the idea of getting the final versions of everything and saving time to refine them does appeal to me,” he said, hand still raised as though physically holding back the information. “But that would mean I would be losing out on all of the epiphanies and ideas I would have gotten during the process of improving them.”

That was a fair point. Sometimes, the process was just as important as the result. Orestis himself had often stumbled into entirely new ideas while halfway through a completely different problem.

Varra paced in slow circles, one hand raised to his chin, one behind his back, making a visible effort to appear profound. It was a performance he had seen before—just not in that particular body. Orestis left the lich to it, waiting patiently.

After a few seconds, Varra raised his head and said, “Let’s do this: I’ll ask for the specific ones I want. Don’t give me anything I don’t ask for.”

“It’s a deal,” he said with a smile.

“Good.” He clapped once, then immediately started rubbing them together with enthusiasm. “I do want everything related to the lich body, though. I want to finish that quickly. Everything else, I’ll figure out on my own.”

“Fair. Although, you might want to reconsider using a skeletal form. That body won’t be able to feel anything. No touch, no temperature, no pain. Nothing.”

Varra waved a hand dismissively. “Eh, I don’t really care about that. I barely feel anything in this body either—dead nerves and all that.”

“Trust me,” Orestis said. There was weight in the words that he hadn’t entirely intended. “You might not care now. But you will.”

“Okay, I trust you!” he said, with the breezy certainty of someone who had never once been burnt—metaphorically speaking.

“But I really can’t use a human body,” Varra continued. “My soul will eventually start to merge with any human body—living or dead—and once that happens, the soul will start to deteriorate. That would make the point of this whole lich thing meaningless.”

Right. He did once mention that he turned himself into a lich in order to live forever. Foolish.

Well. At least he’s brilliant.

Orestis didn’t bother to convince Varra about the loss of sensation either. Some things were better learnt through experience, after all.

Besides, I can always offer the designs of his other body later, when he eventually realises the problem.

“I understand. You can let me know when you want the other version,” Orestis said. “Moving on. About my curse, do you have the apparatus for a full soul scan?”

“Obviously,” Varra scoffed. “Do you even need to ask?”

Then, he made a gesture that activated a couple of wards Orestis hadn’t detected. A section of the cave wall shifted, revealing a passage into a secondary chamber.

Oh, a secondary concealment field nested inside the primary wards. I had forgotten he liked to use those.

This new chamber was smaller than the lab area. At its centre, a spell circle had been inscribed into the stone floor, surrounded by three crystalline spikes arranged at equidistant points.

Of course he uses the more theatrical version.

“Stand in the middle,” Varra said, moving to adjust one of the spikes.

Orestis stepped into the circle without comment. “As it is, my soul will not give you anything useful about the curse. Not directly, anyway. But you will find some interesting things in there. And you do need to know what you’re working with, if you are to help me.”

“Interesting things are the best things,” Varra said, and activated the scan.

The spikes hummed. The circle pulsed once—a wave of diagnostic energy that passed through his body, taking what amounted to a snapshot of his soul. Comprehensive, instantaneous, and much better than a soul lens.

Orestis stepped out of the apparatus, leaving behind a hazy spectral outline of himself within the circle. The visuals were never a necessity—but it was likely the very reason Varra was using this version.

Varra circled the projection silently, tilting his head at different angles as he examined the soul structure.

“You were right,” he said eventually. “This is interesting. Very interesting.”

“We can discuss the details another time,” Orestis said and produced a spare call node from his coat. “Use this to contact me.”

Varra took the node and turned it over in his fingers. “Ooh, nice! I always wanted to use one of these new versions.”

“One thing: I may not always respond immediately, since I’m currently working alongside people who are looking for the necromancer behind the village afflictions.”

“What?! How did anyone realise I was responsible? I thought I disguised it so well!” he exclaimed, surprised and disappointed. Then he paused. “Wait. You’re working with people trying to catch me? Why? Didn’t you say you want to work with me?”

“We are. And I’ll keep them away from you. But you also need to be careful, is what I’m saying,” he explained with exaggerated patience.

Varra thought about it for approximately one second. “Ah! Secret ally situation. Got it.”

“I’ll be in touch,” Orestis said.

“Okay. Bye!” he said with the cheerful sincerity of someone waving goodbye to a new friend.

Orestis suppressed a sigh and teleported away.

If you’d like to read more, I’m 6 chapters ahead on Patreon, along with side chapters, author notes, and extra lore.