#lich girlfriend

[love-and-monsters]

Lich Girlfriend

7,863 words, F Lich X GN reader

You have been searching the desert to find the city that may hold a powerful magician- and the cure to the curse that is plaguing you. But what you find there is different (and more wonderful) than you were expecting.

The world was quiet and still, baked under the unrelenting heat of the desert. You sweated under your clothes. They were light and breathable, but they covered every inch of your skin. The only exception was the thin strip of open area where your eyes peeked out, squinting against the desert sun.

It was stupid to travel during day in the desert. You knew this- you weren’t stupid, as much as your actions seemed to prove otherwise. No, you were desperate. You had less than a week. The stars drifted into alignment yesterday- they weren’t going to stay that way forever. Or for long. They would gradually shift away from each other again, and it would be hundreds of years before you could try again. Or, well, until someone else could try again. In hundreds of years, you will be dead.

Less than a week to comb the desert. Less than a week to find the tiny fragment that marks the entrance to the old Ancient Merrin tomb. If you couldn’t…

You shuddered. Better not to think about it.

You marched on, even as you got dizzier and more tired. Your rations were low- you knew your body just well enough to give yourself the food and water required to not pass out. Every time the dizziness threatened a little too much, you took a drink or a morsel of food. You slept as little as you can manage. Yes, you should have been taking care of yourself, since a weak explorer is a dead explorer, and a dead explorer is no use to anyone- but what was the point? Either you held out long enough to last the week or it didn’t matter.

The setting of the sun and the appearance of the stars and moon sent a thrill of terror through you. Once it was dark enough, you set up a makeshift camp and checked your map and star charts. Further out of alignment today, perhaps a bit faster than you would have liked, but within your estimations. Five days left. You grabbed a few hours of sleep before dragging yourself up and heading out again, lamp clenched in your hand.

Later, you would think about how grateful you were that you passed this area at night, that somehow your travel times lined up so it happened that way. It was only the flickering shadow cast by your lamp that revealed the irregular patterns in the sand. The entire effect was subtle. Barely there. But you could see that the sand had divots in it, lines like it was lying across something with lines carved in it.

You dropped to your knees and start to dig.

It was hard work- as soon as you pushed some sand out of the way, more slid in to take its place. You turned, bracing your back against the shifting slope to stop it, but the hole is unstable. You dug anyway, working with big sweeps of your arms. The pit got deeper, bit by bit, until your hands impact something hard. Emboldened, you clawed at it, trying to follow the edge. It was flat, like a table, though clearly much bigger. You struggled to dig and move at the same time, trying to follow it.

You followed it for only a few feet before it dropped away underneath you. You fumbled, suddenly skidding on pure sand. One of your hands scrambled for the edge and you found it- it dropped off suddenly, at a perfect right angle. Another few moments of digging revealed a wall, heading further down into the sand. You were on top of a building, and you’d just stepped off the roof.

Down, then. You followed the side of the wall down into the sand. It was both easier and harder digging down- the sliding sand of the surface grew more compact the further you went down. That meant the sand was no longer sliding into the hole so much, but it also meant it wasn’t so easy to brush aside. Your arms trembled from the effort, and the deeper you went, the greater the risk of the entire thing collapsing on you grew.

Finally, finally, the wall shifted in texture and shape- an arch. A doorway, set against the wall of the building. You clawed forward. Any doorway would work. You didn’t need it to be fully clear. Just enough to get in.

You scraped and scratched at the top of the arch. The building was as full of sand as the rest of the desert, and the more you dug, the more sand poured out. The sun was rising again, shimmering across the sky. You braced yourself and dug and dug and dug. Finally, finally, there was just enough space for you to push your body through the entranceway.

For about half of the entrance, you were squirming on top of a mass of sand. And then the sand vanished and you plunged to the ground, nearly destroying your nose in the process. You groaned, gingerly getting back up. You’d been expecting the drop, but it has still caught you off guard. You wiped a little bit of blood off your face and glanced around.

The building looked more like a tiny entranceway- it wasn’t much bigger than a few feet across, with an abandoned desk sitting against the wall. Across the room, there was a massive opening, sending the warm light of dawn across the stone floor of the otherwise-dim building.

You turned to look over your shoulder. The entrance you’d come through was dark and rippling, like there was black water beyond. You shuddered. You couldn’t go back through it, though if you were right, that wouldn’t matter. And you were certain you were right now.

The light, loose clothes you wore fluttered in the light breeze from the outside. You approached the opening. It was much cooler here than the desert, and beyond the entrance was a cobbled road, lined with grass and trees. The entire thing was verdant and lush, and there were people walking around, buying things from a market. It was certainly lively and bright, for a place that was under the desert sand.

You stepped forward, approaching one of the people. It was a man holding a child on his shoulders, presumably his daughter. You waved to him. “Hi! Listen, I’m new here- do you know where-”

He didn’t react at all. You tried a few more times, even waving your hand in front of his face. He stared right through you, without the tiniest hint of a reaction.

A nasty thought occurred. You reached out and tried to grab his arm. Sure enough, your hand went through him like he wasn’t even there. No response. He just continued toward the market, bouncing his daughter on his shoulders.

Okay. Hypothesis. Time to test it out. You marched over to one of the market stalls. “Hey!” Not a twitch from the merchant. “Hey! Can you hear me?” You waved your hand in front of her face. She continued speaking to her client, handing them a ripe orange. The client didn’t turn toward you, either. Final test: you reached out and grabbed the merchant’s wrist. Or, at least, you tried to. Because your fingers went right through it. Again, no reaction.

Hypothesis confirmed: these were not real people. They were, at best, ghosts. Imprints of the people who had once lived here, but had all died. The fact that there were several children around made you a little uncomfortable. At worst, they were illusions created by magic to fill the place and make it feel alive. Probably created by someone’s memories, and you were pretty sure you knew who it was. The issue was, how were you going to find them?

You took a look around. The outdoor market was surrounded on all sides by buildings, made out of some pale substance, maybe sandstone. Most of them were relatively tall, with great, hollowed ceilings. Possibly like some form of air conditioning, for when it got warm. It was somewhat warm, though not as hot as it had been in the desert.

But in the distance, you caught sight of what you were looking for. It was a building not too much taller than the ones around it, but certainly more ostentatious. There were even splashes of color across it, marks of tasteful red and white against the pale orange of the stone.

You headed across the market, ignoring the gentle murmur of the people, and ignoring how difficult it was to actually avoid people in a busy market. Your elbows were constantly going through other people, and while there was no sensation, it was weird to see your arm simply vanish into someone else’s chest.

The crowd diminished the closer you got to the building. In fact, no one seemed to be getting within a couple hundred feet of it. Your suspicions solidified into a prediction: what you wanted, you were going to find in this building.

Of course, the doors were tightly closed. You examined them for a moment- they were large, heavy, and bolted shut. Grimacing, you dug out your kit and started to work. Three minutes, more or less, to open it. Longer than you’d wanted, and there’d been a nasty snap of magical energy as well. Whoever was in the building knew you were here.

This building, like the one you had woken up in, was dark. You’d left your lamp outside, so you were left to stumble through the building with only the light of the doorway illuminating the path in front of you. Unfortunately, that became more difficult the further you went into the building. There were the occasional windows, which allowed a slice of light to flow in and create a marker for your progress, but they were well-spaced. There were metal holders on the wall, which certainly must have been used for lamps, but none sat on the walls now.

Despite that, the building wasn’t dusty. It seemed less abandoned, and more temporarily unoccupied. That made you nervous- sure, you had set out to find the owner of the building, but you weren’t interested in getting jumped by them. Every shift in the shadows or faint scratching of movement sent you jumping or spinning in an effort to catch whoever was there.

No one had actually snuck up on you within the fifteen minutes you’d spent exploring the building, but that had only served to make you more nervous. Squinting in the dark, you stumbled across what must have been the lead to the main tower of the building. An upward staircase, which led in a blocky spiral several feet up. You stepped onto it- there was a tingle of magic as you did so. All of the buildings were magic, of course- maybe they had been even before the sealing of the town, in order to reinforce them. Now, however, you were wondering if it would do the opposite- fail on purpose and send you tumbling down to the hard, stone floor as soon as you were high enough for it to be fatal.

You only hesitated for a moment. It didn’t matter. Death was the only option if you turned back. Might as well take the risk of moving forward.

The steps were angular, rather than a smooth spiral, with short lines of staircase interspersed with a larger, angular turning step. Somehow, that made it even more dizzying than your standard spiral. By the time you noticed the next floor in font of you, you felt rather nauseous.

You stepped forward onto the platform, forgetting to be cautious in your misery and it crumbled under your feet.

There was a split second where you were able to think ‘I should have expected this’ before you dropped. You fell for a total of two seconds before you stopped.

It was a strange stop- there were two ways to stop falling. One was by hitting the ground/coming to a sudden stop. Coming to a sudden stop while falling was just as deadly as impacting a solid surface, if you were going fast enough, and you wouldn’t have been able to register that you’d stopped through the haze of broken-bone pain. The other way was drifting gently to a stop, which would have saved you.

This was strange because you’d come to a stop suddenly, but with no pain or smashing. Not even the mild whiplash discomfort of being in a carriage that had stopped too suddenly. One second you’d been falling. And then you hadn’t been.

You lifted your eyes, as they were the only part of your body you could move, to focus on the platform above you. It was a bad angle. Part of the platform blocked your way. But you could see a gaunt, pale woman covered in a robe. Robes typically hang off one’s body, as that’s nearly their entire purpose, but these robes in particular seemed to be trying to swallow her.

It would have been polite to speak, but your mouth and throat were locked up by the spell holding you in place. So you couldn’t plead your case- you just needed to hang there, waiting for your judgement. Half of you expected to be dropped unceremoniously.

But it didn’t happen. For nearly a full minute. Which is a lot longer than it sounds like, when all you can do it look at the ground and think about how bad it would hurt if you started falling. If it hadn’t been for your inability to do so, you would have screamed when you started moving. Even if the way you were moving was up.

You were dumped on the floor in front of her. She was tall, and even with the robe covering her like a humanoid sack, you could tell that she was skinny. To a nearly skeletal extent.

(That would be your second clue. The first was the state of the city.)

“Why are you here?”

Her voice was almost normal, except for a weird rasp. It wasn’t a normal rasp. You would have described it as a buzzing like an insect’s wings- you later learned that thaumatic energy doesn’t vibrate the same way air does, and that can cause some unusual vocal qualities.

“I-” you choked out, because adrenaline also had terrible effects on vocal cords. “I was looking for… for the city of Sol.”

“I am aware,” she said, her voice roiling with impatience. “If you were not seeking, you would not have found. I. Am asking. Why.”             You got the sense she would throw you right back off the edge if you didn’t answer well. “Because it’s supposed to have preservation magic. Magic to stop decay.”

There was a pause. “The terminology is correct,” she says, and you felt a flicker of satisfaction. Unless you were very wrong, that was a note of appreciation in her voice. “Not immortality. Preservation.”

“Immortality won’t help,” you said.

“I assume you mean for reasons other than it not being real,” she said dryly. “You cannot evade death. Not eternally.”

“It won’t help because it won’t stop what’s happening. Do you know what happens to something when it dies?”

Her eyebrows went up and vanished under the hem of her robe. She had the air of someone expecting a trick question. “They… get buried?”

“Yes. Most of the time. Sometimes cremated. Sometimes something else. But that’s usually only with people or pets. But everything that dies, to some extent, rots.” You took hold of your loose clothes, still draped over your body, and tugged a large section aside. Across your stomach, in a patch no deeper than your skin, there was a patch of mold.

Her face showed no reaction. It was impressive. Usually the smell alone sent people reeling. It had taken over a week for your to get used to it enough to stop vomiting every time your shirt shifted.

“Quite impressive, for someone who’s still living,” she said. “Typically that would only happen to a fresh corpse.”

You dropped the fabric back in place. “It won’t die. Every fungicide, every poison and medicine I can get my hands on has failed. Immortality won’t help- that would just make me live on while it eats me. I don’t want to be conscious while it takes me over.”

The woman nodded. “You have some awareness of what it is, then?”

“Do you?”

“More or less. A very rare condition. Very rare. Vanishingly so.”

“Good,” you said through gritted teeth. “I’m glad I’m lucky enough to get one of the rare ones.”

She didn’t acknowledge you speaking. “It is a naturally occurring curse. I expect you stumbled into a natural pool of magic, maybe no more than a couple centimeters in size. It went off and triggered…” She gestured to your side. “That. An eternally-growing fungus, one that will grow faster as it gets bigger. I assume it will reach your internal organs eventually, once it breaks down your skin enough, which will likely kill you.”

“I can’t get it to die. Even if I found a way to live with it, it would eventually just consume me anyway, and I would have to live through the agony of it eating through my organs and getting into my brain. Nobody is able to undo natural curses- they don’t make sense. But if you have preservation magic- it stops the growth. It wouldn’t kill the fungus, but maybe it would stop it. Prevent it from taking root any further, just until I live out my natural lifespan.” You swallowed. “Please.”

She looked at you. Her gaze was icy, assessing. Her jaw shifted. She spoke. “My advice to you would be to find a particularly desolate area to die in, so it does not spread further once it consumes you. Alternately, you could set yourself on fire. Immolation would likely destroy it, though attempting to burn it out of you without complete destruction would probably be a fool’s errand.”

She was turning to leave by the time she finished speaking and, desperate, you called “Wait!”

The word was accompanied by a lunge forward. You weren’t thinking- you just wanted her to stop leaving, and that was usually best managed with a certain level of physical force. Your arm ended up clamped down on her wrist. It was the safest area to grab- none of the intimacy of hand holding, but also grabbing an extremity didn’t make her feel like you were trying to tackle her.

But as soon as your hand clamped down, you knew something was wrong.

It didn’t go through the robe. That was real enough, if also unbearably rough. If she’d had skin, it would have been horrible to wear. But she clearly didn’t have any, because your hand clamped down further than it should have until you were holding onto robe wrapped around something hard and brittle.

You’d never held a human bone before. But you’d held animal bones. And you’d looked at enough human anatomy sketches that you could be reasonably certain you were clinging to the bone of a human forearm.

There was a long, horrific moment. Then you forced your neck to move up, up, up. To look into the face still mostly shadows by hood.

The shadow wasn’t enough to hide that the skin of the face was now rippling and flickering, like an illusion spell when it was disrupted.

A tiny squeak passed through your lips. Fortunately, it was followed by words. “You’re a lich.”

“I’m glad you’re clever enough to figure that out,” she said. It was interesting to watch someone talk with a flickering tongue and lips. “Let go.”

You did so. You also kept talking. “But that’s even better- you preserved your body after death and bound your soul to it, that means you can-”

“It means nothing.” The illusion had settled once you’d stopped holding her, but now it dropped away in its entirety. You blinked. She was skeletal, of course, a mass of bones held together with glowing green tendons. Her eyes were two spots of light in her sockets, both of them focused on you. “I did not preserve my body. It rotted. What remains is protected by magic and repaired by magic, but not preserved. The city which you claimed was preserved? It is illusory. My magic can protect the buildings from the elements, but the people are, as I am sure you have seen, nothing more than smoke and light, filling out their tasks as I remember them. Nothing here is preserved.” The eye lights flickered, like she was closing them. “I can do nothing for you.”

Your side itched. You didn’t move to scratch at it anymore. You hadn’t since the first time, where the skin had come away in chunks. “You have magic. You’re powerful enough to create illusions over the entire city. You were powerful enough to make yourself a lich! There must- there must be something!”

Raw desperation cracked your voice and she seemed to draw in tight at that, though there was no way to read the facial expression of a skull.

“I cannot undo the curse.” Her voice was still raspy, but there was a softened touch of kindness to it now. “I will not turn you into a lich.”

“Not cannot,” you said, clawing for something. “Will not.”

“Will not, because my magical energies are going somewhere else. And I cannot teach you. It takes years to generate the magical might to even attempt the spell. Years you do not have.”

A year, is what you had. Maximum. Might be less, depending on if it kept you alive when it reached your brain- “I came all this way,” you said, the wave of terror that had been reaching over you finally cresting.

She didn’t draw in a long, slow breath, since liches didn’t do things like breathe. But the pause suggested she might have wanted to. “You can stay. I won’t turn you out. But there is no help. I suggest you get used to that.”

The lich headed further into the tower. After a moment, you followed. “What’s your name?”

She stopped. Turned her head back. The glamour was starting to flicker back into place. “Name?”

“If I’m going to be staying, I want to know your name,” you said.

There was enough of a glamour in place for you to see the upward twitch of her lips. “Amarys.”

The living accommodations of a lich are sparse, mostly owing to the fact that liches do not live, and therefore need little of the things humans use to maintain that state. She told you to take what you could find from the houses. All of it was quite dusty, and you stuck to taking the things that were in trunks or out of use. They may have been illusions, but it was just weird to take things from the people.

Making a pillow pile was more comfortable than sleeping in the rough, even if there was no mattress of proper bedframe. Technically there were bedframes in the other houses, but you wanted to stay in the same tower as the lich. As Amarys. It felt safer, even if she’d said she couldn’t do anything.

Liches didn’t need to sleep. You could hear her thumping around upstairs. It was sort of comforting, the sound of a real person doing things. Your side itched. You fell asleep comfortably anyway.

Amarys didn’t mind it when you followed her around. She simply accepted your presence with a nod when you showed up, and wasn’t upset when you wandered off without so much as a goodbye. It was a good setup for you. For hours at a time, you would wander through the magic library, examining tomes on natural curses and magic plants and animals. Unfortunately, it seemed like Amarys had been telling the truth when she’d said that she had no way of curing it. There was precious little information on the subject. Mentions of curses, yes, but the author usually only noted them long enough to also note that there was nothing interesting about something so irreversible.

(You would have thought that would make it more interesting, but apparently it was generally considered ‘not fun’ to beat your head against a wall for days straight. Perhaps when you were doing it, sheer panic had made the whole thing a bit more bearable.)

The lich allowed you to watch as she worked as well, though it was a bit like watching someone solve math problems repeatedly- rather impressive to watch, and it was clear she was doing a lot of things with a lot of thinking behind them. You just didn’t know what any of the thoughts were. Magic was a subject more interesting than math, but also one that was much more complicated and, well. Even the allure of summoning a fireball whenever you wanted wasn’t enough to get you to study. That’s why people had invented matches.

“What was the first spell you learned?” you asked on your third day there. You’d spent the better part of a couple of hours watching her. She didn’t ignore you, in that she told you to get out of the way before something exploded.

“Interesting question,” she replied, masterfully giving a complete non answer.

“In what way?” you prodded when no other words were forthcoming.

“Most of the time, I would expect ‘what are you doing?’” There was a hint of sarcasm in her voice, and some weariness at people who clearly couldn’t understand genius when it was right in front of them.

“Because I probably wouldn’t understand it if you told me,” you said. She actually looked at you, then, with an expression of respect- if you were going to be an idiot, best to be aware of it.

“My first spell,” she said, “was a heat spell.”

“Really?” you said. First spells were usually light, sometimes sparks or fire. Something flashy and obvious. It helped kids feel like they were doing something cool. Heat was relatively unusual. It wasn’t obvious or showy- usually it was just practical. And then, hastily, because practical first spells weren’t always done under the best of circumstances, “You don’t actually have to talk about it if you don’t-”

“It’s all right.” She stopped working and braced herself against the table. “It was to keep myself warm, yes. Here.”

“Right here?”

She smiled a little. “Not in this exact spot. The building didn’t exist. It was actually closer to the point you would have entered the city from. I was freezing- midnight, you know, is unkind in a desert, and I was young. I created the heat spell, and slowly learned more from there. Not all on my own, of course. I studied in several other cities. But I came back here, eventually. I think I had a certain level of nostalgia for it- it was my magic that created the first building here.”

Your brain caught up with the implication. “You’re the founder of the city?”

She smiled, preening a little. “Yes.”

“That was… But the city was lost over a hundred years ago-”

“And I am a lich. Effectively immortal,” she said. “I wasn’t when I founded the city, of course, and I found other ways to extend my lifespan before taking this solution. But it was the best way to protect everyone.”

“Protect everyone? But then why is it-” You bit your tongue in the nick of time. Not a good question. Not to the person who was providing you with the last comfort you’d get before- well. Before.

Her body flickered a little, so you could see the glowing green of bone beneath her skin. “I lasted a long time. But nothing is forever.”

She turned and started back up with her experiments. You didn’t ask her anything after that.

The next morning, you approached her with something of a more urgent question. “I’m running low on supplies.”

She stared at you. “You didn’t bring enough?”

“I brought plenty. I just couldn’t bring them all in with me. I figured if I was going into a preserved city, they would have things to eat there. I didn’t expect the illusions.” You’d tried to take fruit from a cart, just as an experiment. Most of them had been illusions. One hadn’t. It just also hadn’t been fruit. Well, presumably it had been fruit at one point, before making the slow transformation to a pile of rotten sludge. “And I didn’t bring much more than I needed for a couple of weeks. I didn’t expect to be out here for much longer than that.” She considered for a moment. “I can help.” With great reluctance, she moved away from her table of magic devices. “Come with me.”

You followed her down and out of the tower and through the back part of the city. The back part of most cities was usually the back part, but this one seemed nice. Well-lit, with fewer buildings and more plants, and then the few buildings there were parted to reveal rows of fields. Or what had been fields at one point. They were a bit overgrown. An apple tree stood at the far end, hanging heavy with fruit. As you watched, you noticed that all of the field was in bloom, as overgrown as it was. The varieties were from all over the world, even exotic things like pumpkin and cacao. Wheat and onion and other assorted things.

“The cows and chickens and sheep died some time ago,” Amarys said. “But there might be some cheese in storage. Wine as well, and salt.” She gestured to the field. “Take and eat as you will.”

You dug in, grabbing a few apples and other ready-to-eat fruits to munch on as you examined the crops. Clearly they were magically maintained, but you weren’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. It took only one trip back to the library to get a hoard of cookbooks and the you were off.

You cooked in the tower kitchen, and you were happy to do so. Cooking hadn’t been something you’d done in a while, since you’d been traveling and surviving on dried food or grabbing something to eat at a street market on rare occasion. Getting to cook was almost novel, and using interesting new recipes only added to the experience.

It was only after you’d been cooking for nearly an hour that you noticed Amarys standing in the doorway. You nearly jumped out of your skin. “You- damn, I didn’t even notice- how long have you been-?”

Amarys smiled. Her disguise was still flickering, so you could see her teeth through her cheeks as well. “Some time, though I was hoping not to disturb you. Your carrots are about to burn.”

You took them off the stove. “I wasn’t bothering you or anything, was I?”

“No,” she said. “The opposite, in fact. I could smell what you were cooking and it drew me here.” She looked around the room. Maybe you were misinterpreting, but you could have sworn that she had a look of wistfulness on her face.

“I’d offer you some, but…” You trailed off. You were pretty sure liches couldn’t eat.

“Quite impossible for me,” she said, confirming your suspicions. “But it is nice to watch, sometimes. And the smell is delightful.” You gestured to the table. “Don’t feel obligated to stand on ceremony or anything. I’ll be done in a minute.”

She did so, gathering her robe around her as she settled down. You carried your dishes over to the table as they were completed and spread them out. Perhaps you’d been overambitious, considering that you wouldn’t eat all of it at once, but it wasn’t like you were going to get many more feasts.

Amarys leaned forward, sniffing. “It smells wonderful.” “Thanks! I mean, some credit has to go to the person who created the food, of course,” you said, gesturing to Amarys. She ducked her head in a slightly-bashful acknowledgement of your words.

“Perhaps we shall say it’s a team effort,” she decided. You dug in, blissfully savoring the flavors. It was good, though whether that was due to your cooking prowess, the quality of the food you’d been provided, or if you were just easily pleased after spending ages on the road.

It was a bit weird, eating with someone who wasn’t. She spent a little bit looking over the food, examining each dish with interest. Then she’d just started to watch you, which was a little strange. “It’s been some time since I’ve seen this,” she said. “A long time since the kitchen’s been used. Over a hundred years.”

“It’s well-maintained,” you said.

“Yes, physical preservation is not always so difficult. And I admit, most of the areas in this building have greater levels of care than some others in the city. I never thought they would be used, but…” A slightly pained look of happiness came over her face. “I am pleased they have been used.”

“I’m glad I was able to use them.” Your side prickled, as if to remind you that you weren’t going to be able to for much longer. It was getting bigger. You could feel it traveling deeper than your skin, every day. It didn’t hurt, exactly. Not most of the time. \

Amarys watched you eat for a little longer. She opened her mouth a couple times, but never said anything. She just watched you.

It was just as you were finishing and preparing to clean up when she spoke. “Allow me.” She lifted her hands and closed her eyes. You could still see the glowing points through her illusory eyelids. Green light flickered around the table. The plates and utensils floated away. One of the plates passed by your nose and you could see the surface gradually getting cleaned it did so. Everything slipped back into the drawers they had come from, cleaner than when you’d retrieved them. The food itself vanished and Amarys lowered her arms. She didn’t seem to be breathing heavily, but her illusion was flickering and faded, which seemed to be a better indication of exhaustion for her.

“Are you all right?” you asked.

She drew herself up and her illusion stabilized. Mostly- it was still faded enough that you could see bones through her skin. “Fine. The food is stored in the icebox, if you would like to reheat it. Doing practical magic like that simply winds me for a bit.” Her illusion strengthened again, leaving her perfectly solid. There was a bit of a pause, where Amarys looked at you. Was she waiting for you to say something or working up the nerve to say something to you?

“Thank you?” you tried. Amarys sighed, quiet and gusty.

“I am grateful for your thanks, but I do not require it,” she said. “I… am actually attempting to thank you. Poorly, I should think, but I am.”             You started a little. That was… not what you were expecting. “Why are you trying to thank me?”

Amarys lowered her head a little. “Time works differently for the undead. I am not affected by it the same as others. A human, kept in isolation for even a single year, would go mad. I am not quite human, and I do not experience the same things. I have been alone for a very long time. It did not drive me mad, because I don’t think I can be driven mad in the same way. Or, at least, not on the same time frame. I didn’t even realize I was lonely. I worked and worked so much and then… Well. I never looked up to realize that there was no one there.

“Until you arrived. And… I suppose you can get used to anything, given long enough, and I’ve had quite a lot of time. But it only takes one little change to make the bearable… not. And it took your arrival to make me realize that I had been terribly lonely.”

You’d been listening in silence, but this felt important to respond to. “I- I’m so sorry-”

She held up a hand. “No. I am not asking for an apology. Just listen.” She lowered her hand and took a beep breath. She didn’t need to, you knew, but perhaps it was steadying nonetheless. “Do you know why this city is called what it is?”

“The City of Sol?” You thought for a moment. “Because of the desert sun, right?”

She smiled. “Not quite. I think I heard too many mysterious adventure stories when I was young, because I was a bit too clever in naming the city. I named it this way because, well… It’s not Sol. It’s Ssol.” She carefully pronounced the extra S. “Backward, that’s the City of Loss.” Her posture drooped a little. “The destruction of my city was magical in nature. Not my own magic, but something I should have seen coming. A magic burst from inside the Earth. Rapid, and devastating.”

You winced- magical bursts were rare, natural phenomenon. Usually, they made people sick for a few days while their natural magic reasserted itself from the disturbance- for one to literally wipe out an entire town… That was a once in a thousand years level of power.

“As it was, the burst nearly unwound me. I was catatonic for a bit over a decade. And when I awoke, everything I had built over centuries was gone. The city stood, but the people did not. I was in pain, lost and alone. And so I created spells. Spells that would maintain the buildings, empty as they were, maintain the land, hide the city from most people, and would create… shadows. I could not create a spell that would replace the people, but at least now, when I looked out my windows, I did not seem to be alone.”

She lowered her head. “But I was alone. Always. And no matter how much energy I dedicated to the spells, there was nothing that could bring them back.”

You put your hand on her shoulder, sympathetic as you could be. She closed her eyes for a moment, pain flickering over her expression. “I said earlier, I could not make you a lich, as I did not have the energy to do so. That was… correct. I am using a lot of my own magical power to maintain this place. The experiments, the things I am trying to create in order to bring everything back to the way it was, can be even more draining. But having you here, even for the brief time, has made me realize…”

She paused and closed her eyes again. You thought about telling her not to bother, that you could leave, not make her think about this anymore. But you recognized that this was important to her. And no matter how uncomfortable seeing her in pain made you, you would stay and let her say her piece.

“I am dead. I spend my time with ghosts. And as much as I have convinced myself I can bring them back, I cannot. I must not linger in the past anymore. I must… move on. And I will move on. With you, if you will allow it.”

She looked at you. Her eyes were brown. You could see the green light glowing in the center of her pupils.

“I am going to make you a lich.”

The preparations for lich-hood were extensive. She examined the fungus in your side, eventually excising whole chunks. “A lich doesn’t need to have their original body,” she explained. “The magic is an aspect of the soul, you understand- it only needs a place to be housed. It prefers the body it knows, of course, but if the fungus clings to you even after death and reconfiguration, you’ll need to hop somewhere else.”

“Do I get to pick?” you asked.

“Yes, to an extent. I’ll want to prep a couple extras anyway. I had some extras.” She smiled. “I had a bird.”

“A bird?” you repeated as she cleaned your side.

“I thought it might be interesting to fly,” she explained. “Liches can fly regardless, but like a bird… I thought it would be particularly cool.” She laughed. Mirthless. “I suppose it’s ironic. I picked an animal that could fly only to chain myself here.”

“Because you loved everyone here. Not a chain. An anchor. Ships need them, so they don’t drift. Maybe it was important to have them. You’re not chained here and breaking away. You’re just… raising anchor.”

She smiled. “Thank you.”

The analysis of the fungus took a while. You stayed near her as she worked. She spoke on occasion, and sometimes it wasn’t even to ask for something.

“If we can work quickly,” she finally determined, “you have the option of keeping your body. In some ways, the positioning is fortunate. If it was on a bonier area, like an arm, it may have simply adhered there. Though I suppose that could merely have been cut off and the curse may not have spread. Or you would be a lich with one arm.” She shook her head a little, to refocus. “But it is only tied to your physical form. Deeply, too deeply to be carved out, but it hasn’t touched bone and that will be all that’s left once you become…” She paused, then turned her head and gave you a faint smile. “You’ll be able to change your appearance, you know. When you become a lich. It’s all an illusion.” She paused. A cool, boney hand touched your face. “But I do… I rather hope you’ll keep this one.”

And then she pulled away, doing another experiment, another thing to save you, and you felt like you were burning and overjoyed all in the same moment.

The preparations took time, a long time. But they were, eventually complete.

“It will be easier, since I am doing it for you,” Amarys said. “But it will still hurt.” She’d mentioned this before, but it wasn’t a terrible idea to mention it again. “And it will feel different than hurting. I suggest you find your own anchor, something to tether yourself to.”

You nodded. “I have one.”

Amarys didn’t ask. She kept going. “It will take a long time to wake up. The magic will destroy the body quicker than usual, but it will take over a month for everything to settle and for you to wake up.”

“And then I’ll be nothing but bones,” you said. You tried to make your voice humorous, but you couldn’t hide the undercurrent of terror.

“You’ll be magic holding some bones together,” Amarys said. “You’ll be wonderful.” She took your hand, squeezed. “I will be there for you the whole time.”

“Thank you.” Her magic buzzed against your skin. You closed your eyes to feel it better. Soon, you would be like that. “How do we start?”

There was a complicated hexagonal figure drawn across the floor. It was designed to keep the summoned magic contained, as well as instruct the magic on what to do. Even when inert, you could feel the power of it lifting the hairs on your arms and the back of your neck.

“Step into the circle,” Amarys said. You did so, moving to the center. There were a couple of things lined up outside the circle, potential bodies if yours didn’t work out. A dog, a mannequin, and a book. She had told you stories of liches who’d found their souls housed in books. There as hope for a transfer later, but it was better to wait until you were stable in one form, and if you initially ended up being stable in a book, then you would be there for a little while.

You really hoped you didn’t get attached to the book.

“Breathe easy,” Amarys said. “I won’t let anything happen to you.” She smiled. You could see her bones faintly through her skin. It was oddly reassuring.

The magic swelled around you. It pressed against your skin, attempted to bulge away from the fungus on your side. Amary’s brows drew together in concentration just before her body flickered away. The city groaned. The little noises of people had faded the moment the spell started. It would collapse in the wake of the spell, Amarys fleeing with the last scrap of energy and your body. She would get you out of there, and hunker down while you recovered.

Just as the magic swelled to an overwhelming crescendo, you saw a glimpse of Amarya again. She was in her skeletal form, with magic swirling over her, forming the indistinct shape of a human over them, glowing green and ethereal.

Beautiful.

That was your last thought before the magic closed over you.

It was warm. Pleasantly warm, like a summer’s day. And dark. You were pretty sure your eyes were open, since your eyelids didn’t seem to exist, but it was still pitch black. There was a feeling like floating. Or being rocked. And maybe someone was humming? You wanted to close your eyes to focus more on the sound, but you had no eyelids. The sound was drawing closer and it was beautiful, humming right into your soul…

Something creaked and a thin beam of light appeared. The beam widened until you were surrounded in light, and then your eyes began to adjust.

You were in a building, the walls made of clay. It was modestly decorated, with a cluster of magical artifacts scattered across the floor. But you only looked around for a moment before focusing on the person above you.

Amarys was leaning over you. Her illusion was still faint, giving you a clear sight of her skeleton through her skin. But you could still see that she was smiling.

“There you are.” She eased a hand into the box (the coffin, presumably) and helped you up. Your body had been wrapped in deep purple cloth, but your arms and hands had been exposed. You could see your skeleton, wreathed in the pale, sunshine-yellow of your magic.

“I’m alive,” you said- or tried to say. You weren’t experienced enough to speak properly without lips.

“Take it easy,” Amarys said. “We’ll work on that later.” She rested her hands on your face. You could still feel them, though it wasn’t the same as feeling skin on skin contact. There was something deeper- the contact of her magic against yours. Like your souls were brushing together. Sharp tingles rolled along your body.

“Oh,” Amarys said as she drank in your face. Her eyes gleamed with magic and emotion. “You’re beautiful.”

Your magic swirled in eddies of delight. Amarys leaned in and the contact of magic against magic sharpened to something bright and overwhelming and wonderful. There wasn’t a kiss- there were no lips to have one with. But the magic that flowed and combined was more intense and intimate than any kiss you’d ever had.

[aberrantundead]

Royalty in Death by lichelets.

Aggy belongs to ThePorgers.

[evillious-trash]

Nemesis going full mad scientist mode and trying to figure out how to resurrect people (read: Nyoze) my beloved au.

[violadesdragons]

Vlakkith’s will be done

[terrorjk]

i feel like tsubaki would low key be into black and white european psychodramas. alas, the only person she has to talk about that with is stein and he can be awkward about it.

They had a nice discussion about Ingmar Bergman’s “Persona.”

[spkyscry-a]

The ultimate battle. Her pride vs. financial benefactors.

[little-red-fool]

The progression of each of the acts’ storylines in BG3 is insane because it’s just like

Act 1: There’s a bunch of goblin cultists trying to kill some druids because they believe in a different deity, kill them so the refugees can leave safely, or turn on the druids and refugees if you want to play as a bad guy

Act 2: A bunch of people have been kidnapped so you need to venture through the British countryside of Perpetual Night to kill this lich with the help of his lesbian daughter and her demigod girlfriend in order to revive an immortal child that was banished to the Shadow Realm

Act 3: A gnome terrorist organisation will help you blow up a giant robotic policeman so you can go beat the shit out of an Archduke after you find out his anaemic spy’s underlings have been murdering people from the local brothel before you go to soufflé a giant psychic brain deity so everyone doesn’t turn into evil squid furries.

[lucretiaadventurezone]

ohmygod this is so embarrassing but i accidentally trapped your lich girlfriend in an umbrella. yeah no it’ll be awhile. yeah i erased all memory of her. sorry

[huramuna]

huramuna's masterlist.

currently working on:

banshee's lament - aemond x stark ofc (ongoing series) masterlist

completed:

aemond targaryen:

series: a maid's folly - dark aemond x maid ofc masterlist oneshots: blue dove - modern, dark aemond x best friend oneshot(18+) growing on you - modern aemond x (ex) girlfriend oneshot (18+) stoatfaced, dragonhearted - mean, dark aemond x wife oneshot (18+) firehaired, lavendereyed - mean aemond x pregnant wife oneshot (18+) sequel-ish to stoatfaced, dragonhearted. lay all your love on me - modern aemond x wife reader oneshot (18+) new valyria - modern aemond x shera stark oneshot (18+)

aegon II targaryen:

series: wine red, tears gold - aegon II x baratheon wife ofc masterlist oneshots: downpour - modern aegon II x nanny reader oneshot (18+)

alicent hightower:

oneshots: flowers for my lover - alicent hightower x healer ofc (18+)

aemond targaryen & alys rivers:

series: beware the sapphire peak - aemond x wife x alys masterlist

on hold / hiatus: (not currently working on, will pick up at a later date. indefinite hiatus)

aemond targaryen:

even in undeath - lich king aemond x reader chapter 1

selkie’s song - night’s watch aemond x shapeshifter wildling ofc masterlist

the calico bastard - aemond x strong bastard ofc masterlist

coming soon: (aka, in the idea phase but not started)

helaena targaryen x handmaid reader alicent hightower x rhaenyra targaryen x reader growing on you sequel (from aemond's pov) banshee's lament shapeshifter au - aemond x shera stark

[rindomness]

he's scared of the dark. he's a necromancer. he likes swimming in cold water. he's a lich. he's lactose intolerant. he's been looking for his lich girlfriend for a decade. he's a scientist. he's always stressed. his family doesn't remember him. i didn't say his name but he popped into your head anyway

[morally-grey-girlbosses]

Propaganda under the cut.

Starlight Glimmer:

She ran a whole cult town on her own! She learned a complicated, powerful time travel spell to get her revenge, taking down the world in the process! She later becomes headmare of a large school! She was better when she had bangs. She has a girlfriend! Go listen to ‘say goodbye to the holiday’!

Lae'zel:

My girl comes from a supremacist alien culture, so what if she likes torture and interrogation? Have you considered that she has strong arms and beautiful eyes? That she is so honorbound that she would kill everybody in this god damn camp and then herself? She didn't even gut Shadowheart right where she was standing when we found out that Shadowheart stole from her people, she in mercy incarnate! All Lae'zel wants is to kill some Mindflayers and Devils, and maybe Astarion, and get to ride a red dragon in her lich queen's honor. So what if she doesn't care about other people's lifes and disapproves if you help any poor wet cat along the way? The nerve of some people!

[lakemojave]

The Direct Actors: A Baldur's Gate 3 "Adventure" pt. 10 live tonight at 6pm Pacific!

WE! ARE! SO! BACK! After a several months hiatus @caputvulpinum is back from wandering the earth as penance for its numerous crimes against me, the channel, and the sovereign nation of Venezuela. We can get the team together again! Join us for the return of our co op campaign of BG3, with @radiofreederry as Dhudlei Durite, @caputvulpinum as Micah Harper, my friends Nana and April as Leviathan, and me as Delilah "Mama D" Harper! See y'all then!

Art by @terrafey, recap under the cut

THE STORY SO FAR: On the way to a union rally, Delilah "Mama D" Harper and her grandson Micah were abducted and taken aboard an ilithid nautiloid, which they escaped with mysterious dancer Leviathan and self-proclaimed "Champion of Ilmater and Paladin of Good" Dhudlei Durite. Each infected by a mind flayer tadpole, but so far immune from transforming into mind flayers themselves, The Direct Actors, as the party have come to be known, now turn their attention to the Shadow-Cursed Lands, where Moonrise Towers, the lair of the Cult of the Absolute, awaits them...

LAST TIME: With Leviathan missing after falling off a cliff, the Direct Actors allowed Lae'zel to venture forth with them, and at her insistence headed into the mountains in search of a Githyanki creche. Along the way, the party killed a racist who was trying to steal a Githyanki egg, and met a blue jay who asked them to kill some eagles. At the creche, the Direct Actors were introduced to the finer points of Githyanki culture, including a brutal training regimen. Dhudlei was allowed to take an egg to raise with his girlfriend, and said girlfriend was subsequently nearly killed by the Zaith'isk, a supposed device for purifying those infected by mind flayers. As it turned out, the device was really meant to kill the infected as sacrifices to the lich queen Vlaakith. Initially in denial about her queen's sinister nature, Lae'zel insisted that the party seek the Githyanki inquisitor, and an audience with Vlaakith herself led the party to enter the Astral Prism, the Githyanki artifact they'd been carrying which had protected them from ceremorphosis. Vlaakith demanded they kill the Prism's occupant, but Dhudlei was more interested in getting some answers from this being which bore his mother's face. The Dream Visitor explained how Vlaakith had deceived her people and, her secret exposed, Vlaakith declared Lae'zel a traitor and ordered her death. Fighting their way out of the creche, the Direct Actors stopped to catch their breath at camp. They were visited by Kith'rak Voss, who declared his allegiance to the Githyanki Prince Orpheus, and called for Lae'zel to meet him in Baldur's Gate, as Micah chastised Dhudlei for his recklessness in the creche. The argument was interrupted by the sudden return of not only Leviathan, who had spent days wandering the Shadow-Cursed Lands, but New Gale, who had taken a new form as a gnome. Leviathan remembered little of his time in the shadowlands, but seemed shaken by it. The Direct Actors returned to the monetary which housed the creche, and Dhudlei guided Micah to claim the Blood of Lathander, a holy weapon, for his own. Afterwards, after a conversation with Mama D about choice and destiny, Micah received a surprising visit from Ilmater himself, who promised that they would meet again, and answers would be revealed...

Will Lae'zel leave her cult programming behind her, and will she and Micah be able to bond? What has Dhudlei figured out about the Dream Visitor? What - and who - did Leviathan see in his time in the Shadow-Cursed Lands? Will Ilmater reveal himself again? Find out in another exciting instalment of Baldur's Gate 3, starring the Direct Actors!

[fire-swift]

So... Lancer × The Locked Tomb... I like the idea of Griddle being a Balor pilot and Harry piloting a Lich. What about you?

Hey hello, thank you for the question. Also sorry for all the Lancer to my tlt mutuals, it will happen again. Harrow has to pilot a lich, even if just by vibes alone.

I don't know about Gideon in a balor, what was your reasoning? The heiress of the minor house of a remote karrakin barony planet has to appear for a contest with other house heirs, despite being her enemy she needs to bring the prodigy blackbeard pilot, famous for pushing recklessly ahead and engaging in brutal melee ignoring the exposed reactor. When the contest is announced Harrow disappears into dark corners and goes on searches in obscure omninet spaces and comes back in a forbidden mech of ancient lore.

But also, consider: Harrow, mercenary contracted operative stranded on a destroyed ship, modifying the mech of her girlfriend who just died to get harrow here safe, and coming out crying and punching the pirates who did it to oblivion

Or a brand of mechs with NHPs who call themselves necromancers bonded to their cavaliers, and fight as a tandem, the cavalier shooting and moving and the NHP hacking enemies and protecting their mech

[softpastelqueer]

werewolf boyfriend this…vampire girlfriend that… where’s posts for our non-binary lich significant others?

Where’s the love for their magical boney passion?

[terrorjk]

i have a terrible idea for a slasher movie. slasher with a pump action shotgun, black body armor, a helmet with glowy blue optics, a bunch of specialized shells for like smoke, tear gas, incendiary, but mostly heavy shot for removing limbs and pulping flesh. victims are the kinds of people usually targeted by cops so it takes a lot of time for the actual cops to do anything. eventually cops do have a super violent showdown and the slasher falls, revealing empty armor. the movie ends with the slasher's kit going into evidence storage and cops wearing mirror blue aviator shades at all times. beg nia dacosta to direct. shoot on location, big practical effects budget. (a sequel is not in the works.)

Terrible idea? I think you mean the most horrifying slasher movie ever.

(Of course a sequel is not in the works, because it's too terrifying to even consider.)

[aita-blorbos]

AITA for reading my girlfriend's mind? So my (19F) girlfriend (21F) is also my classmate at university. Both of us go to a magic school, and she's an upperclassman and a star student. I have the power to bring back the dead, and last semester after we tried a magical ritual that went wrong, she ended up dying. I managed to revive her in a few seconds, but it was really scary and traumatic for both of us. Also, for context, her parents are separated, and she lives with her dad, but I think she likes her mom better.

After a pretty eventful last year, right before winter break, I learned her mom is actually an evil lich, and was hiding it from all of us. I tried to tell her, and we had an argument about it because she didn't want to believe me. Finally, she told me she found out it was true, and her mom was inviting her to stay with her during winter break and undergo a magic ritual to become a lich. That was super scary for me because liches are soulless and, as far as I know, evil! But she didn't want to believe her mom could be evil, and after what happened last semester, she was interested in doing it. Both of us were pretty messed up by what happened— I didn't want to lose her again, and she didn't want to be put at risk of dying again. I begged her not to become a lich, but she told me it wasn't up to me and we went on winter break on a pretty sour note. After we returned to campus after break, she seemed really awkward and had purchased a very expensive gift for me and wasn't willing to tell me anything about how her winter break went. I was really worried and scared, and didn't know if she had become a lich or not, and so against my better judgment, I secretly cast a spell to read her mind. It was just for a few seconds, and I could tell that she was really worried and upset about telling me something. I told her immediately afterward and apologized, and she left and now she isn't talking to me. I know it wasn't the best move, but I just wanted to know if she had lost her soul or not. AITA?