Only now did Evan grasp how badly off he was. As a lich he was an incomplete specimen — physiologically he qualified, and he had no illusions about that. The body felt no pain. It felt almost nothing. What passed for sensation was purely the perspective of his soul, a strange and detached awareness. He didn't dwell on it. Becoming a lich had a price, and he had chosen this.
But a lich without a soul vessel — that was a different matter entirely. It hit him like a blow to the head. With trembling hands he gathered the shattered pieces and fitted them back together. The mithril and obsidian had gone dead, the magical arrays etched across them broken beyond use. Nicholas Andrew's soul had already gone to meet whatever Death God he'd believed in.
Evan extended his hand, made a gesture, and chanted the incantation for a basic fireball. Nothing happened. That wasn't a necromancer's spell — it was elemental magic, the kind any mage of any school could manage. A water mage could produce a fireball, even a weak one, simply by drawing on the ambient elements through the words of the spell. But a lich was different. A lich used only death magic. All other elemental systems were closed to them.
He tried several other common spells from different schools. Each one failed. Still not satisfied, he spoke aloud: "Death is the destination of all things — Bone Cage!" Black fog rose. Bones appeared from nowhere and stacked themselves into a cage before him. He dismissed it.
That settled it. He was no longer a necromancer. He was a lich — body, magical signature, every characteristic confirmed it. A lich without the one thing that made being a lich worthwhile. A lich without a soul vessel.
Evan sank to the floor. If this body were destroyed, he would not come back. And there was a second problem: how long would this body even last? The transformation ritual had consumed the last of Nicholas Andrew's vital essence. The shell he now inhabited was already depleted.
He sat there in the dark. It was the middle of the night.
What Evan didn't know was that the moment Nicholas Andrew died, something had passed through each of his servants like a hook drawn through the body. They had curled in on themselves, cold sweat breaking out across their skin, and bitten back the urge to cry out — fear of their master's power ran too deep for that, even now. But after a moment the pain faded, and with it came the strange sensation of a weight lifting. The servant contracts that had bound them dissolved, gone from their minds as though they had never existed. A feeling they had almost forgotten returned: freedom. Somehow, inexplicably, Nicholas Andrew's death had not killed them — though by every rule of magical contracting, it should have.
They didn't understand it. But the contracts were gone, and minds that had been locked shut for a long time began quietly to stir. None of them had become his servants willingly. Under the contracts, a single thought from Nicholas Andrew could have made their lives unbearable, and so they had suppressed every flicker of resentment, not daring even to think it. Now the shackles had vanished without warning and they lay still, each one uncertain, each one testing the edges of this new freedom in silence.
One of them finally clenched his jaw and, in the privacy of his own mind, cursed Nicholas Andrew's name. No consequence came. He nearly wept with relief — though he kept still, not knowing what had happened or what the others were doing. The one thing he was certain of was that his master couldn't be dead, because the contract had been clear: if Nicholas Andrew died, they died with him.
In another room of the castle, a young man lay in bed with his eyes closed. He was not asleep. He was Nicholas Andrew's apprentice, Allen Watson, and he had been lying awake and alert ever since the ritual began. His master hadn't permitted him to observe the transformation — there was no margin for error in a lich conversion — but Allen Watson knew what was happening. He was a fourth-level necromancer himself, having just crossed into the Mage stage of elemental attunement, though Nicholas Andrew had never noticed. His master had been too consumed by obsession to pay attention, and had assumed the boy was still a Magic Apprentice.
Now Allen Watson had a choice to make. For months, his master had been throwing himself at the Creationist Church in what amounted to a suicidal campaign of revenge. Allen Watson understood what the Creationist Church was: a vast and immovable thing, the kind of enemy that didn't lose. He had to think of himself.
The Creationist Church's position on mages was more nuanced than outsiders assumed. It called practitioners of other faiths heretics, but mages it treated differently — any mage who swore loyalty to the Church was accepted, classified as a straying lamb returned to the fold. This had brought the Church enormous talent over the centuries. Even necromancers were not excluded. But a lich was another matter. The Maker had ordained the span of human life, and a lich was a direct challenge to that law. A lich was a true heretic, without exception.
Allen Watson had no intention of being buried alongside Nicholas Andrew. The moment his master completed the transformation, he had put himself permanently at war with the Church. Allen Watson had made his decision. He would betray him.
Evan sat on the floor and let his thoughts run loose for a while before he managed to pull them into order. His mind was a mess — he was inhabiting the memories of a man nearly thirty years old, but his own soul was eighteen, and lived experience didn't transfer through memory. Still, years spent on a hospital bed had given him a certain resilience. He had learned not to fall apart. Things were what they were. He had a body, he had magic, and that was more than he'd had a few hours ago. He might as well fight for something.
The moment he made that decision, a new steadiness came into his eyes. He had been planning to leave immediately, but now he reconsidered. He would give the Creationist Church something to remember first. He was from Earth — he had no instinctive reverence for divine authority, no reflex of awe before the idea of gods. That was worth something. And unlike the people of this world, he had no chivalric scruples about how a fight ought to be conducted.
He took stock of his body. A lich's blood still circulated, but slowly, carrying an energy that had no common name. Body temperature hovered near the ambient air. A lich was something outside the normal order of living things — its decay proceeded at a fraction of the normal rate, and wounds that would have rotted a corpse into uselessness would not affect its function for a very long time.
He tidied the altar and let himself think clearly. Two months before the Holy Inquisition arrived. He was a lich, but compared to the full weight of the Creationist Church he was nothing. Walking away without making a mark on them didn't sit right. If he had to leave, he would at least make sure they didn't take him lightly.
With that decided, he went to Nicholas Andrew's alchemy laboratory — if it could be called that. It was closer to a dissection room: specimens of dark-element magical beasts in various states of preparation, two demon corpses, assorted body-part samples. He looked around for a moment and moved on.
The storage room held more of interest. Against one wall stood a bronze cannon — one of Nicholas Andrew's collectibles. This world was somewhere in its late medieval period: cannons and firearms were common in armies, though their performance left much to be desired. Matchlock muskets and bronze cannon fired with alchemical powder, poor accuracy, limited stopping power. Most mages didn't bother with them; personal magic was faster, more reliable, and significantly more destructive.
But Evan was from Earth, and his instincts ran toward firearms. He rummaged until he found the powder and a supply of shot, and then a flintlock pistol — single shot, but it would do. Something between a smile and a grimace crossed the dead features of his face.
He went through the rest of Nicholas Andrew's collection methodically. He had never had any intention of meeting the Holy Inquisition in a fair fight. If he ever found himself in a duel, it would only be because his power so thoroughly outstripped his opponent's that he could afford the formality. Otherwise, no method was off the table.
Even then, he didn't trust his magic enough. That wasn't false modesty — he came from a world where magic didn't exist, and it would take time before his confidence caught up with his capability.
Then he found a staff. Over a meter long, with a strange beast-head carved at one end — something like a serpent lizard. It looked like a mage's staff, but he knew from Nicholas Andrew's memory that it wasn't. It was a sword-cane.
He drew it. A slender blade, similar to a rapier, forged from layered and folded steel, with a magical array etched in mithril along the flat. A proper enchanted weapon.
He thrust it forward and channeled magic into the blade. A dim grey light kindled along its length. And then a thought surfaced and stopped him cold.
Why not disguise himself as a swordsman? Or an ordinary mage?
Once the idea was there, he couldn't let it go. His mind opened around it. He couldn't appear as a lich. He couldn't use death magic in public. But death magic was all he had.
That problem had a solution, and this world had already worked it out: magical arrays could handle the conversion.
Evan got to work immediately. Liches didn't need sleep. He lit a candle, found several pieces of cured magical beast hide, and carried them back to the alchemy lab. Through the night he crafted two enchanted bracers — an approach this world hadn't tried before — tracing the arrays in beast blood and mithril, then adding a second layer over the top to conceal the working entirely.
When they were finished, he put them on, murmured the incantation, and said: "Fireball."
A fireball appeared. He dismissed it and estimated the output. Roughly equivalent to a fifth or sixth level mage.
Not enough. But it was a start.
It was time to bury who he was completely.