[Beastborne: Tower of Blight] Chapter 54

Aldrich incanted under his breath, but that proved to be rather hard to do without a lower jaw. The words came out as a faint hiss.

Desperately, the lich twitched his hands, but found them traitorously missing.

There was one final thing he could do, but it would end not just the lives of those around him, but his own.

Is it worth it? He thought to himself.

They wanted to know about the Fathomways, about the Balesians, and worst of all, about the Calamity. It was Aldrich’s sworn duty to uphold the secrets of his ancestors and safeguard the future against those who would seek to unravel the scant protections the Balesians left the world.

As a mage of Balesian descent, Aldrich knew how coveted their knowledge was. Nobody ever came seeking it to “save the world”. What a load of poppycock!

And yet, the drow could clearly kill him if she so desired. She had disarmed him–quite literally–and now he was at her mercy.

The secrets of the Balesians must never be unearthed! A part of Aldrich’s mind screamed. It was the last vestige of the proud young man he used to be.

However, time waits for no man. Things change. The seasons progress. Men and women die and are born again. Even a lich is not immune to the steady march of time.

They either live long enough to see everything they care about turn to ash, a desperate and pitiable existence where every action is taken to preserve something that no longer exists.

Or they move with the flow of time. Integrate themselves, become part of the new generation, and the generation after that. Always learning, always growing.

Aldrich had tried to preserve what he could of the past and look where that got him.

He whimpered in the back of his throat. I was so hot!

Even as a lich, he had that dark, waifish look that was so in at the time.

Now he was just a bag of bones. Scarier for sure, but not enough to frighten off these reprobates.

There was one benefit of not having skin and organs. Pain was a muted thing. He could still feel it, but without taking severe–oh, there it is.

The one they called Ralst took out a dagger and began to lightly twist it into one of his bones. Cracks appeared across the pale white surface. Green necromantic light leaked out. His very life essence was being drawn out.

That should have been impossible!

“Are you ready to be a good boy?” Ralst asked curiously. She didn’t seem to care what his answer was. One way or another, she would get her way. “I’m applying about a tenth of what I could otherwise exert. If you want to try my patience, please, go ahead. There are other ways of finding the information I seek.”

“You will destroy us all,” Aldrich hissed. His voice came out strange without his lower jaw.

“That’s not the answer I’m looking for,” Ralst told him, pressing a little deeper and drawing more of his life force out.

The pain was approaching his limit. Trained and undead though he was, Aldrich was not a machine.

“I yield!” he finally said, his voice weak and wobbly to his ears—or rather, ear holes.

Faster than thought, Ralst returned his jaw and his arms from the elbow down.

How did she do that? He wondered, flexing his digits and looking at the damage on his forearm. He focused his Cthonis, using the reserves from his Deathcore to repair the damage at an accelerated rate.

It took far more than he was comfortable with, suggesting that Ralst had done more damage than she should have been able to. Especially with a puny dagger.

“Mind telling us why you wanted to kill us?” Ralst asked. She could have been asking why Aldrich wore a green robe instead of a black one. There was no concern in her voice at all.

But the most fearsome person in their group wasn’t the drow, or even that strange stardust demon that watched him with a look of wry amusement on whatever passed for a face.

It was the little girl.

Luda couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old, but she had known Balesian. And an ancient dialect of it, no less! She was by far the worst of the lot.

He had the unsettling feeling that she was watching him at all times with that crystalline third eye on her forehead.

“You wanted to know about the Balesians,” Aldrich said simply, adjusting his cuffs and folding his pale bony hands in front of himself. “It is my sworn duty to protect their secrets. You must understand, it was nothing personal. The Shard must be safeguarded at all costs. Anybody who would seek out the Balesian’s Great Work would only be looking for a weapon.”

“We are in agreement on that,” Ralst told him. She motioned to the teleporters. “Take us to your mountain retreat, unless you want to be turned into powder. I am done making nice with you. From now on, you’ll do as I say, when I say it, or things will get much worse for you.”

Aldrich’s necromantic fires raged, but they cooled the moment he saw the look in Ralst’s eyes.

This wasn’t a bluff.

She might not be able to find his phylactery, but that didn’t mean there weren’t ways to hurt a lich. Some were even worse than death.

An eternity trapped, divided into pieces across the entire Shard.

Few people had the power or drive to undertake such a gruesome torture, but he knew Ralst would be one of them.

“Very well,” Aldrich said stiffly. He took them to another teleporter, glanced over his shoulder at the wry look Luda gave him, then took one more step to the next pad. “This is it. To prove it, I will go first.”

Ralst smiled at him. “Oh, no you won’t.” She lashed out a silvery bracelet across his wrist, then onto her own. “We’re linked. Anywhere you go, I go.” Her lips twisted into a cruel grin. “Go ahead. Try to break it. I dare you.”

Aldrich looked warily at the fine metal links. They looked like something the elves would have cooked up, too pretty by half to be useful, as fine as any cloth. It resembled a thread more than a chain.

But that look.

Never one to repeat the same mistake twice, Aldrich cleared his throat and did his best to appear gentlemanly. He motioned for her to join him on the pedestal and then he spoke the command word.

Darkness collapsed around them. Even without flesh, Aldrich could feel the world squeezing him, pushing him across thousands of miles in the blink of an eye.

The world spun on its axis for a moment and he stumbled out, but Ralst simply strolled forward as if it was a walk in the park. She tugged the lich after her and was soon joined by her friends.

His mountain retreat was just as he had left it.

Sunlight streamed in through the large windows that had stood the test of time. No dirt or grime would stick to them despite their age.

“And your servant?” Ralst asked.

“My assistant, he is around here somewhere. Probably raiding the fridge or more cheese. Man loves his cheese, no matter that he’s horribly lactose intolerant.”

“Tell us about him,” Luda said.

Aldrich shrugged bony shoulders. “What is there to say? He is a loyal ally, assistant might be a touch harsh. I think of him more as the–”

“If you say ‘son I never had’ I will literally throw us both down the mountain,” Ralst warned him.

The lich scoffed. “I was going to say that I think of him as the lab assistant I never had. Aside from his strange fascination with cheese and his odd belief, he is tidy, punctual, undead, and most of all, quite brilliant.”

They walked out from the arrival chambers to the main hall that wrapped around the edge of a mountain. It was cloaked with magic that revitalized itself by tapping into the various leylines around the Barrier Peaks.

Aldrich had known the mountains by a different name in his youth. Back then, they had been so tall nobody could climb them. After the Sinking, they were one of the few refuges from the renewed horrors of the world.

With his family home below the iron dark waves, Aldrich built a new home far away from such painful memories. There was nothing for him there anymore.

Instead of dark halls, he preferred those with brilliant light. Of course, for his assistant, he kept side entrances and alternative passages so he did not have to traverse the deadly, sun-filled corridors.

He told them as much, doing his best to remind them that while his assistant was quite capable, his beliefs made him tricky to deal with.

“What beliefs, exactly?” Ralst asked in that all-too-rational tone she used before violence was employed.

They followed him down another hallway that led into the depths of the mountain.

Besal snickered. “I think I know,” he said with barely contained mirth.

Aldrich looked down at the pile of fine black ash that the demon was stirring with the toe of his boot.

“Unhand him that moment, sir! You do not want parts of him on you when I reconstitute him, do you?”

Besal raised his hands placatingly and stepped back. The dust drifted off, as it always did, reforming with a small swirling motion.

Even if they scattered it across the hall, eventually the dust would reform into a single pile.

“Do any of you have blood?” Aldrich asked.

“Not as such, no,” Besal said, with what Aldrich was coming to understand as a sardonic tone.

“I do,” Luda said gently before Ralst could say anything to stop her.

The drow shot an angry look at her. “First, tell us why.”

Aldrich tried to roll his eyes, but the expression did not translate well without the appropriate orbs. Tiny green necromantic flames in the hollow eye sockets of his skull were not the same.

He motioned to the pile of dust as if it was obvious. “He is a vampyr.”

The look of confusion was plain on their faces. “In my time, vampyrs were fairly commonplace. I take it you do not get many Children of the Night now?”

Ralst looked from the pile of fine dust to the lich. “Vampyrism has practically died out. They have not troubled the living for decades, at the least.”

“Troubled!” Aldrich roared. “They were the guardians of mankind! They assured that knowledge and structure were passed down with a steady hand at the wheel! How could you say such blasphemy? They were stalwart protectors and souls with infinite compassion.”

“They drank blood.”

“They were gifted blood from the same people they protected. All they asked was a blood tax. The people kept their riches and valuables. Wealth that they could use for future generations. What is a little blood, knowing it will regenerate in days?”

“So you say,” Ralst said, unimpressed.

Besal was far more interested, which came as quite a surprise to the Starscourge. With what little he understood, vampyrs were similar to monsters. So, in a sense, monsters had been guardians of mankind in the past.

It made him feel, even for a brief moment, that maybe he wasn’t entirely that odd. That maybe he might belong a little more than he thought possible.

The kindling of hope was a strange and unusual feeling to Besal.

“You will see,” Aldrich told her. “Macon is an excellent vampyr.”

“Who forgets he can’t walk in sunlight,” Besal said, noting where the pile of ash was.

“Yes… well, we all have our foibles, do we not?”

“Yes, but what precisely were you saying about his beliefs?” Ralst asked.

Aldrich looked down at the pile of fine ash. “He… believes he is a dhampyr. A legendary daywalker.” He raised his hands to stop their laughter. He would not stand for it above the remains of his friend and ally. “Yes, yes. I have heard it all before! So what if he wanted to get a little sun on his skin from time to time? Is that so wrong?”

Ralst knelt next to the pile of ash. “Yes, but he would die.”

“A little blood brings him back, right as rain.”

“How many times have you done this?”

“I lost count around 72. That was when I started to secretly dose him with a potion that would render him resistant to the harmful effects of the sun. Without me here, poor Mac must have thought he was immune and… well.” He gestured.

Rolling her eyes, Ralst took out a needle and pricked her finger over the pile of ashes. She squeezed out a drop of blood.

When nothing happened, and at the animated insistence of the lich, she squeezed out three more.

The pile of ash began to stir.