Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

Thanwa Temirak had fucked up.

He had fucked up badly.

Thanwa’s jaw worked endlessly, not a sound coming out.

As he spun through the vast emptiness of space, he occasionally contemplated if there had ever been an elvenoid who’d fucked up as badly as he had. He didn’t really have anything else to do.

Many eons ago, he’d come to the conclusion that people who’d made a bad decision and gotten killed over it were better decision makers than he was.

He’d done the math. The integral of the single decision’s function over time.

Thanwa screamed into the void, and had no voice.

Thanwa didn’t include people who had negative things happen to them, oh no. This was all his decision, and he’d had a few centuries silently screaming about it all before coming to the uncomfortable conclusion that everything bad that had happened to him was exactly his fault, and nobody else’s.

He had fucked up. Badly.

Thanwa was a lich, and there was quite a culture among the liches of ‘who can make the best defenses for a phylactery’. They were Immortal, and far more durable than most other elvenoids. Their bodies were temporary, and could be easily reformed from their phylactery, should the worst happen. Shattering the gemstone structure meant instant death, but it was far easier to disrupt a biological creature’s delicate hemostasis, versus shattering a small crystal. Able to independently move away from their phylactery, armoring and protecting them had a whole different dimension. Only the smallest gap was required to form a new body. Wrapped in magic metals? Penujuman was the premier consumer of the rare materials. It didn’t matter how rare liches were - there were always more layers to add.

Lethal defenses? The only people approaching a lich’s phylactery meant them harm. The phrase was even a euphemism for elaborate suicide in Kra-Dai.

Curses? Misdirection? False layers, deadly traps, outrageous bribes to leave them alone? That was the basic package, before they started to get esoteric. After a hard day’s work, most liches had the hobby of figuring out new and imaginative ways to protect their phylactery.

Thanwa wished he’d been a little less imaginative. Thanwa wished he had shared his particular ‘great idea’ with his friends and gotten their opinion. Thanwa kicked and punched out in all directions, not touching a single thing.

Almost no light met his eyes. Just a hundred million sharp pinpricks of light all around him, in the vast emptiness of space.

Thanwa had royally fucked up, and he had eternity to pay the piper.

The first rule of phylacteries: Don’t tell people where it is. Hostiles couldn’t destroy a phylactery they didn’t know the location of. Liches got creative. Underground lairs, a single tree in a forest, thrown into the depths of the ocean. Thanwa had skipped that particular fad, and was glad of it. A dozen liches who’d tried the ocean deep for protection had popped in a single day, something in the depths destroyed them all.

No, Thanwa’s bright idea had been to send his phylactery to space. He’d always been fascinated by the stars, the moons, the planets and the sun. He’d studied it extensively, and gotten a brilliant idea.

He had bet he could launch his phylactery out into the depths of space, where nobody would ever find it. He’d spent so many years calculating velocities, orbits, and trajectories, hidden away in his secret lab, so convinced that he could do it, that he never paused to think if he should do it. The day he confirmed everything was correct, that he had all the skills needed, and that it would work was the day he sent his true body hurtling into space.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

He managed to keep it quiet for a week, before he started to brag about his accomplishment.

If only he’d told someone before he launched… ah, regret was bitter, and had no cure.

His friends had promptly told him he was an idiot of the highest order. When his body was ‘destroyed’, he’d reform at his phylactery.

The one heading into deep space.

Thanwa resolved to live like most Immortals, and avoid taking risks to his projected body. It worked well enough. For around 800 years he’d lived a normal life, with the occasional tease from his friends reminding him of what an idiot he’d been. They’d granted him the mocking title of ‘the safest lich ever’.

Then he’d gotten caught up in an Immortal War, and found himself reforming in the depths of space. The same depths he’d been spinning in ever since.

The System was his constant, only companion. He tried to talk to it now and then, not a single sound made in the empty reaches of space. He’d tried to commit suicide a dozen times, attacking the protections on his phylactery. Unfortunately, past-him had been far too competent at protecting his phylactery, and his efforts were for naught.

Thanwa had leveled at an excruciatingly slow rate. Passing the boundaries of the solar system and getting a solar-wide notification of his accomplishment had been nice, and a good number of levels, but it didn’t fix his damn problem!

He tried to adjust when he finally classed up, but still found he wasn’t powerful enough to destroy himself. Thanwa tried to send himself back to Pallos, and succeeded once - for a given definition of success. He’d burned up on re-entry, and found himself reforming back at his phylactery, another year added to his age counter.

He spun through the vastness of space, thought to himself, and was quite insane.

He’d fucked up, moreso than anyone else in history. They had the option to escape, somehow.

No god would put him out of his misery, no matter how much he cursed, begged, or pleaded. Perhaps his cursing stopped them from helping, and any god that cared to look could see that he was trapped in a worse hell than anything they could devise.

Had Thanwa always lived in space? Was Pallos simply another hallucination, another [Pleasant Dream] he let himself slip into?

Did it even matter? Everyone who might know him was gone. If he ever made it back to Pallos, how would it be any different than an alien world? New people, new cities, new landscape as Immortals threw around vast powers - how was the Pallos he left at all the same to a Pallos he’d come back to?

Thanwa drifted.

Thanwa plotted.

Thanwa daydreamed.

Thanwa tried to scream, and had no voice.

Thanwa wondered how his age counter worked. Was it still based on a Pallos year, or had he drifted close enough to a planet to change how his age was being counted? Was it working off solar rotations? Galactic time? The numbers seemed to fly forward at some point, rapidly clicking up like a waterwheel turning a gear. Other times his age seemed to stagnate, staying at the same number for an eternity and a half.

It was vaguely irritating when a micro-meteorite hit him, and forced his body to reform. He’d properly protected his phylactery against strikes, but not his projected body.

Occasionally the lich passed a rock, or another object. The trick was seeing the rocks against the darkness of deep space. Only when they shadowed out the stars - stars Thanwa had long ago memorized the position and color of - could he catch a glimpse of them. There was literally nothing else to do but study the rock, and trace out its destiny. Orbits of every object in Pallos’s solar system had been immortalized in his skills. From the sun to the planets, the rings around the gas giants to every moon, Thanwa had plotted them all out. His skills helpfully told him where they were, and how they’d interact with each other. Every new comet and meteorite he could plot. This comet would pass by Pallos in 67 years, and be seen again in 419 years, before coming too close to the largest gas giant and sinking into its gravity well. That meteorite was going to pass terribly close to the sun, and barely come out scorched on the other end. Celestial navigation at its finest.

The Gravity skills he’d taken to launch himself into space were equally good at nudging things. A tiny adjustment to the comet would let it swing by Pallos multiple times without getting destroyed.

Then, one day, Thanwa hit upon the holy grail. The potential solution to his problems.

Thanwa first spotted the planetoid when it was tens of thousands of miles away, a few stars blotted out. He initially thought it was a close rock passing by, but as time went by, as more and more stars were darkened out, he started to realize the magnitude of the object. If there was better light, he would’ve seen that it came in a thousand vivid colors. No mere comet, the rock was large enough that gravity was pulling it together, a small rejection of Creation floating past the grasp of Pallos’s sun.

And the trajectory!

Oh, the trajectory was almost right.

Thanwa performed the same calculations he had a million times, plotting all the different ways he could nudge the planetoid. It was new, it was novel, he gained several levels from seeing all the different ways he could tap the planetoid with just the smallest amount of force, and send it careening through Pallos’s solar system. It was novel, mostly because the planetoid’s mass was significant enough to make a few other orbits wobble a hair, which adjusted the rest of the calculations.

He didn’t have much time.

He had no friends to bounce ideas off of.

The gods had abandoned him.

Why?

Why not?

It was a potential escape from the never-ending hell he was in.

Thanwa Temirak nudged the orbit oh so slightly, setting the planetoid on a collision course to Pallos. The difference in their speeds meant he wouldn’t be able to catch a ride, and if he was successful, he’d gain enough levels to ascend to godhood, and finally be free of his personal torment.

After it had picked up more speed by performing an orbital slingshot on the rest of the solar system.

It would take thousands of years for his little nudge to get the planetoid into position, but what was time to a man trapped for eternity?

Thanwa grinned… and looked for anything he could send as a follow-up shot.