PreCursive

  “I assure you, you’re in no danger here,” The owner of the voice said nontly before pausing. “Well, as long as you do nothing foolish, of course.” They amended.

  That retty damn hard to believe, sidering the source.

  The path of undead had opened up into what looked like a…b of some kind. In the odd green light of the underground cavern we’d beeo, there must have been dozens of workbenches both lined up against the walls and i rows in the floor space. Even more undead Orcs than had been f the path were wandering the rows and...appeared to be cheg various pieces of equipment? I watched as one former Orc stirred an unfamiliar potion, mindlessly turning a rod to swirl a pewter pot over an open fme. Another was assisting by seemingly minding the fme. Plenty of other ses just like that occurred all over the bizarrely inappropriate b space.

  But none of that caught either my attention, or those of my panions, more than the master of this mausoleum.

  What Dusk had called a Lich.

  They, it, was some kind of floating…skeleton person, aheir ‘body’ was altered. They had four skeletal arms, for one, while their skull seemed to have been repced with something non-human. Non-Orchish, even. I think, from my time as a huhat it was a bear skull. Seemingly grafted onto its smooth surface air of what looked to be an impressively rge set of moose antlers. The skull was directed our way, somehow watg us with eye sockets that possessed the same firey blue glow that the undead did. Their body was cealed by an impeccably maintained bck silk robe fluttering in a ent breeze, with a short crimson cape throwheir bony shoulders. They floated over a tral sb in the middle of the cavern, seemingly uheir own power, while an opeher-bound book did the same in the air o them.

  We seemed to have interrupted them in the middle of something, sidering the surgical implements held in their four hands. My gaze drifted downwards to rest on the sb, and when I did, my heart stuttered in my chest.

  Sylvia saw it too. Her hand, which had somehow ended up clutched in my miightened. “Hook…” She whispered frightfully.

  Our dwarven leader was lying on the sb that the Lich was floating over. The best I could say about him was that he was still breathing, from the stuttery rise and fall of his chest. But he was absolutely covered in blood.

  Because it looked like the Lich had opened up his rib cage.

  Even from where I stood, I could see straight into his chest. I watched in horror as the dwarf’s heart pulsed rhythmically, somehow still pumping blood through his body despite being exposed to the air.

  He was awake, too. Hook’s head was turo look our way, watg us…calmly?

  Wait, what?

  Brutally suppressing the emotional respohe sight had instilled in me, I took another look.

  Hook didn’t look armed at all. There was an almost bored look in his pletely aware gaze. While his left arm looked to be strapped down, I watched as his right hand made an almost soothiure in our dire. Despite everything, I thought the dwarf was bizarrely saying that everything was…fine?

  How the fuck was everything okay?

  While I was iing Hook, everyone else was still for a moment. I think the Lich was watg us to see what we would do .

  I don’t think Dusk saw Hook’s gestures in her horror, because she made a move.

  The wrong one.

  Violently drawing the extendable spear I had lent her earlier, she triggered the meism. When it had reached its full length, she uncharacteristically snarled in an animalistiner and made to leap at the Lich.

  I saw the Lich tsk to himself, his bony jaw shifting slightly. One of his four hands rose, holding a blood-stained scalpel. Murky green Mana that practically screamed its strength into the world swirled into being, cupped in his thin fingers.

  Fortunately, I had activated Sylvan Vigor active at full strength only a few moments ago.

  I grabbed Dusk in a full nelson hold, my arms ing up from under her own to ce behind her neck. The Gnoll woman tensed in surprise, trying to instinctively bash my nose in with her skull. Thankfully, I took it on my . I still winced from the force of it, feeling a gash open up.

  The Lich thankfully paused, eyeing me ptively.

  “Nathan?!” I heard Sylvia excim, startled. “What are you doing?!”

  “Gambling,” I grunted out, fighting to keep a hold of Dusk.

  “Let go of me!” Dusk snarled again, almost rabidly. She struggled in my restraining hold, nearly overp me even in her disadvaate. Still, even if she was strohan I was, she didn’t have the leverage to do anything about it.

  “Hah,” The Lich chuckled dryly. “If yambling, boy, then I’d say you pyed your hand well.”

  “Dusk. Dusk!” I shouted at the Gnoll, as she writhed in my arms. “Look! Look at him! Does Hook look like he’s in pain?!”

  Dusk’s struggles slowed, as she raised her furry head and took a closer look at Hook. Said spymaster had tried to raise up a little off the sb at Dusk’s fury, only for the Lich to casually push him back down with one skeletal arm. Even then, with his ans nearly falling out, Hook still didn’t look like he was in the agony he should be.

  He just looked armed at Dusk’s rea.

  Sylvia came to stand beside me, having noticed what I did. “Sir?” She asked the spyed open form of Hook tentatively. “Are you…all right?”

  I didn’t bme her for the doubt in her voice.

  Hook tried to answer her, but only mao wheeze. Probably because I could see that one of his lungs was defted, in the open cavity of his chest.

  I shuddered, but still didn’t let go of Dusk.

  Since he couldn’t speak, Hook instead shrugged his one avaible shoulder.

  The Lich spoke for him.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say he’s ‘all right’,” The talking skeleton said, idly dang a scalpel across one of his four sets of bony knuckles. “When one of my assistants found him after his apparent fall, the dwarf was near death. I was just in the middle of some, shall we say, ‘advanced first aid’.” He chuckled, the ugh ringing hollow from his animalistic skull. “His left arm is well and truly shattered, as well as a truly staggering fifteen of his ribs. One lung is defted, while the other is currently struggling from bone shards embedded in it. There’s some additional an damage in this fellow, but nothing that a good night’s sleep couldn’t fix from his Status.”

  Dusk finally slowed, the Lich’s expnation finally pierg her fury. Instead, I could see the Gnoll woman start to ht boggle at the neancer’s words.

  I didn’t bme her. I was feeling it myself.

  Gradually, I let go of Dusk. She slipped out of my arms bonelessly, the fight having apparently left her.

  Meanwhile, Sylvia tinued speaking for us. “Are you saying…that you’re trying to save his life?” She asked incredulously.

  The Lich’s skull tilted to the side. “Indeed? Isn’t that what I just said?”

  “But you’re a neancer!” I nearly shouted, stopping myself at the st minute. “Isn’t death your whole thing?”

  The floating pile of bones snorted. “My whole thing indeed. Young man, just because I’m quite skilled at neancy doesn’t mean I’m not a skilled Surgeon as well. Even Liches used to need Professions, you know.”

  “And…what will you do when you’re finished with your ‘surgery’?” Dusk asked slowly.

  The Lich shrugged. “I shall pat the fellow on the bad direct him towards the surface, along with the rest of you. Really now, you’re all being quite rude,” He said, pointing a hand holding a bloody pair of forceps at us. “I’m perf quite the service for you, you know. I aid good for simir procedures in life and here I am doing it for free.”

  Hook raised his free hand and made a soothiure towards the Lich, while simultaneously shooting the three of us a nearly murderous look. He mouthed a sente us slowly.

  ‘Don’t antagonize him.’

  Dusk, Sylvia, and I g each other. I deliberately tried to calm myself as I smiled uneasily at the neancer. “Ah…ologize. Thank you for attending to our panion, Mr…?”

  The Lich paused for a moment, tapping his skull over where his lips would be with one free hand. “Ah. I haven’t thought of names in quite some time. Hmm…” He said slowly, before making an amused noise. “I have an idea. You may call me Tzocuauhtli, in honor of the city we reside uzo for short, as I doubt any of you are very familiar with Orcish.” He ht ughed then, the hollow noise eg oddly off the stone walls of the cavern. ‘Tzo’ paused at our perplexed expressions before shrugging. “The joke doesn’t transte well into on.”

  “I…see,” I said slowly, to the obviously insane neancer. “So…Hook, our friend will be healed when you’re finished?”

  “Yes, yes,” Tzo said idly, bending back down to dig around in Hooks abdomen. “Well, not ht healed. I have no talent in that school of Magic. Rather, I will mend what I while keeping him alive. When the procedure is plete, I will then graciously provide a potion to help him along a his Status do the rest of the work. The dwarf shall be quite weakened for some time afterward, but he will recover. Eventually.”

  I tried to keep it in. I really, really did.

  But I had to know.

  “Sir?” I asked tentatively, causing one of his glowing blue orbs to look up at me. “What are you doing down here? It’s just…we were ambushed by quite a number of undead before this and…”

  “And you want to know if they were mizo answered, audibly bored. He fully raised his head, while two of his arms worked on autopilot with a set of needle and thread, stitg up something inside Hook without even looking. “Well, irely. Those are little better than semi-wild automatons, risen from being within the zone of my influence. I think of them as being wild hounds that keep the riff-raff away.”

  “Those 'wild-hounds' nearly killed us,” Sylvia said quietly.

  The Lich made a dismissive noise. “And? I’m not the one barging into someone else’s home. Don’t pihe local wildlife tries to take a bite out of you. Really, it’s not much more different dowhan a particurly musty jungle. Kill or be killed, as they say. Brace yourself, this will feel quite odd,” He said to the very attentive Hook. The dwarf tensed up as Tzo ran a hand up and down the length of Hook’s apparently shattered left arm, a green glow affeg it. There was an odd g sound, like dozens of bones setting themselves bato pce.

  Hook shuddered. In fact, I shuddered as well.

  “I’m not above sending grave diggers on their way if they mao make it all the way down to my b, however,” Tzo said idly, spooling out another length of thread and resuming his stitg. “Well done and all that, etcetera, etcetera.”

  “We’re not grave diggers,” I said, a little incredulous. “We’re just…” I winced and quieted uhe harsh stare that Dusk sent me.

  Tzo paused for a moment, looking up at me. If he still had them, I’m sure the Lich would have been raising an eyebrow. “Just?”

  I didn’t know what to say. Luckily, I didn’t have to say anything.

  Hook uedly coughed, his lungs apparently re-infting. Leaning over the side of the sb he was on, he spat out a disgusting hunk of dark red blood a. Taking a deeper, clearer breath, he answered the Lich. “Taking the back path into Ttec,” He said hoarsely.

  “Oh?” Tzo asked curiously. “The Orcs have shut their gates? Why?”

  “Because…there’s a war on?”

  “Oh. Ugh,” Tzo literally waved my words off with one of his free hands, suddenly disied. “How pedestrian. I was hoping something more iing was happening.”

  I…guess a Lich located in an underground tomb wouldn’t know all that much about what was going on with the surface world.

  However, he was ied in something else.

  Or rather, someone.

  “My dear, I have to say you intrigue me,” Tzo said suddenly, casting a gaze over Sylvia. She te his regard. “I ’t quite feel your bones. And…that’s quite a well-done illusion you have over yourself, for your level. Whatever could you be hiding?” Before she could even ahe Lich waved his hand.

  And the human-seeming illusion that Sylvia had been wearing since we’d arrived outside Elderwyck shimmered away. Her true Mithril self was reavealed, shining silver in the odd green light of the neancer's torches.

  The firey blue orbs set into Tzo’s skull shut on and off a few times, as if he was blinking. “What? Did you perhaps transmute your entire body, young dy? That would be quite a feat, I must say.”

  Did…this guy know nothing about the Sculpted?

  How long had he been down here?

  As Sylvia began to haltingly describe what the Sculpted were to a suddenly enraptured Tzo, I wondered if it was a good idea to be telling him.

  What good could e from an apparently powerful Lich being ied in the living again?