Level One God

The area beneath the coliseum had low, moldy ceilings and a single hallway wide enough for three or four people to stand shoulder to shoulder. The hallway was a straight shot to the stairs ahead that led back up to the coliseum.

There were dozens of smaller rooms along the hallway where groups had sat, though most clustered along the main hall while we recovered.

Jarn and his team were at the far end, watching the stairwell that led back up to the larger arena.

The shape of the narrow hallway had felt safe. It was why we came down here. Given the creatures we just survived above, it would mean we had a narrow choke point to defend and clog with powerful magic if more palefiends came. Now, though… I looked forward at the sea of bodies choking the hallway, lined up like bowling pins, just waiting to be knocked down.

A swallow clicked in my throat.

I felt a sense of gathering cold and watched as the shadows drifted toward the stairs. I stared down, thinking my eyes were playing tricks at first. But the shadows were being tugged toward the stairs, shrinking and falling to the ground where they stretched and rolled down the hall like sand drifting toward a colossal wave moments before rising and taking form.

My mana sense mirrored what my eyes were seeing. Something was gathering in the direction of the stairs, drawing power toward itself in a slow rush.

Magic flared all along the hallway as men and women prepared for combat. At the end of the hall, the darkness was gathering in the doorway, which seemed blacker than black, now. It was pure emptiness, seeming to yawn silently wider like a mouth about to drift forward and swallow us all.

I wasn’t the only one who suddenly doubted the arena we’d chosen for the battle. “Spread out!” Jarn called, turning and shouting. “Into the rooms! Out of the—”

The shadows coalesced into a figure eight feet tall and unnaturally slender. It was a woman, but everything about her was wrong. Her skin was shrouded in scales that covered every inch of her, perfectly following the shape of her lanky body. They stopped at her forearms, exposing bone-white flesh. Her feet were bare and dangling as she floated perfectly still, just inches above the ground.

Scales climbed up her neck and covered her elongated, alien-like head. Aside from the pitch-black eyes and pointed teeth, her face looked completely human.

[Lich, Level 50 (Silver)] “A lich is a powerful practitioner of necromancy. Their bodies are tied to a relic called a phylactery. The lich cannot be truly killed unless this relic is destroyed.”

“Thank you,” the lich whispered. The “whisper” was deafening, though, and exploded through the narrow halls like a thousand bugs chittering together at once. Men and women were shouting and moving into the side rooms. Some stood firm in the hall, weapons raised or magic in their hands. Circa had positioned herself directly in front of me. “It was kind of you to bring so much mana to my home.”

With no more preamble, she struck.

Her body broke apart into a flock of shadows that raced down the hall like bats. I watched one of the “bats” punch through a man’s chest, leaving a hole the size of my fist. Darkness spread from the wound, quickly reaching the rest of his body. He shivered, convulsed, and then lurched at the woman beside him, cutting her down with a ruthless series of blows from his daggers.

Circa stabbed her staff into the ground. The writhing black roots sprung to life like veins. They fired out in dozens of directions at once, punching into the bats that were screaming down the hall, turning men and women into bloodthirsty thralls.

Circa shouted with effort, then clenched her fist. All the tendrils whipped the bats to a central point, and the lich reformed with a deadly smile on her face. “A worthy opponent,” she purred. “How rare. Unfortunately, I rather prefer unfair fights.” She clapped both hands together and a spectral green fist the size of a car punched through the wall, revealing a series of caves behind the brick.

Behind her, Jarn stomped his foot down and sent a series of rocky spikes at the lich, who absently waved her hand, knocking back a dozen men and women with a pulse of shadows that blew them back, bodies slamming into the far wall with sickening thuds and crunches of bending metal armor.

Another group was desperately trying to hold a doorway as the zombified corpse of the huge woman with a sword was hacking her way in, black electricity sparking away from her armor and weapon in dangerous jolts.

“Go, Brynn,” Circa said, never taking her eyes from the lich who was drifting down the cleared out hallway toward Circa. “She is far stronger than I anticipated. I don’t know if I can win, but I know I can slow her down. Make it worth something by getting as many of them out of here as you can. Survive.”

Circa’s staff spread into a series of black ropes that weaved themselves around her like writhing armor.

The lich continued forward, eyes blank as something came pounding out of the hole she’d opened in the wall. Spectral green blades started erupting from the ground, stabbing at Circa from every direction.

She deflected them, but the impacts sent shockwaves of force strong enough to nearly knock me down as I tried to move with Lyria and Rock deeper down the hallway.

The zombified woman with the sword was finally brought down. There was a brief roar of triumph as the bald tomte burst from the room and ran past the lich and into the opening she’d broken. I heard his hammers smashing into something a few seconds later, then an inhuman roar.

Jarn was back on his feet behind the lich, but more palefiends were coming down the stairs. He and several other guards had their back to the fight between Circa and the lich, cutting down the beasts as fast as they could, but they were already being pushed back from the stairs.

Dammit.

The only path to the stairs was through Circa and the lich. That, or we could go through the broken wall and hope for the best.

“Brynn!” Circa shouted as she blasted away a glowing green shard of energy larger than her body. It punched into the ceiling, raining down bricks and dust. “Go. You can’t help. Not with her. You’ll only be throwing away your life.”

I clenched my teeth and fists, desperate to think of some way I could help.

The only way to get to the others would mean walking straight past the raging battle between Circa and the lich, who blocked the hallway ahead.

Past them, there were two battles raging. One was led by Jarn and the guards trying to stop palefiends from pouring out of the stairs.

The other battle was a group of adventurers fighting a zombified corpse. The zombie was a dark haired mage, slinging black-tinged fire at them, but a woman in white projected a golden barrier that made the arrows glance harmlessly away. A blonde-haired man pointed his finger, connecting dozens of strings to the zombie-girl’s chest, then threw a handful of arrows that landed on the strings and were instantly yanked forward, peppering her so hard she slammed back into the wall, landing lifelessly.

“We have to go!” Lyria said, yanking my arm. I slipped behind Circa, giving her one last look as I saw her fire a tendril of magic at the lich that punched straight through her body. The lich reformed the spot by pulling in shadows from around her almost instantly.

Rock led us forward. We cut into a room when we saw the wall had been broken by her giant fist of magic a few moments ago. It gave us a straight shot into the tunnels.

Ducking to avoid the falling rubble and the occasional stray blast of magic, I followed Lyria and Rock.

Then I stopped in my tracks.

The bald tomte was hammering away at what I could only describe as a palefiend on steroids.

[Paleking, level 50 (Iron)] “The paleking is the apex predator among apex predators.”

The short tooltip wasn’t necessary. The paleking was six feet of lean muscle. It was almost all arms and legs, with a torso too small for its body but with long, claw-tipped arms that were slashing at the tomte berserker so fast I could barely track it.

Behind the fight, I saw a series of stone steps leading upward. I suspected those would lead up to the coliseum above.

It was another way out. I needed to tell Jarn and the rest of the people still back in the hallway.

“Help him,” I said to Rock and Lyria. “But don’t get yourselves killed. I’ll be right back.”

“What?” Lyria asked. “Where are you going?”

“I’ll be right back!” I shouted over my shoulder.

I ducked in the broken wall and caught a glimpse of the ongoing battle between Circa and the lich. The magic spears didn’t seem to be penetrating the armor Circa had put around herself yet, but they were knocking her around violently. She occasionally lashed out, swiping at the lich with a vein of magic that only managed to temporarily wound the lich, who simply called on more shadows to heal herself.

“Jarn!” I shouted over the roar of fighting.

Everybody was trying to fight their way up the stairs, now, but the palefiends were coming in too heavily.

The guard captain knocked away a crowd of monsters with an earth stomp, then backed up so another fighter could take his place in the front line. He looked my way, eyes wide and face drenched with sweat. His thinning hair was wild and falling in every direction.

“Another way up,” I said, pointing to the breach in the wall. “But there’s a beast in there. We need help with it.”

“There’s another way!” Jarn shouted, voice cutting through the madness.

The healer in the white robe was standing nearby. “Someone needs to stay, then. They’ll overrun us from behind if we leave here.”

“No,” I said. “We could collapse the stairwell. We might still have to deal with them up top, but they won’t be behind us.”

Jarn nodded gravely. “Bring down the stairwell!” he shouted.

There were a few confused looks amid the panic. Jarn pointed back toward the breach again. “We have another route. Shut this down!”

A man gripped a two-handed war hammer in both hands, raised it overhead, and hurled it forward. It spun through the air then crashed into the brick with a thunderous boom.

The stairs and the doorway came tumbling down with a rushing belch of dirt and debris that pelted all of us.

Once fighters dispatched the last of the palefiends, we all turned.

Circa was still locked in combat with the lich, trading blow for blow. The magical veins wrapping around her were splintering, though.

“Tell us how to help!” I shouted to Circa as a few lingered behind with me, probably equally unwilling to leave her to do this on her own.

“Go!” she shouted, voice strained. “None of you could even touch her. Leave this to me. Please…”

Something in the last, desperate word tugged at my chest.

“Dammit!” I hissed between my teeth.

A man beside me roared, ignoring her warning and charging forward. The lich didn’t even turn around. A spike of green magic punched out from the wall, impaling him and killing him instantly.

We all drifted back a step, and then the sounds of the battle in the breach finally dragged us out of the doomed hallway.

The paleking was bleeding in a dozen places and limping backwards. Arrows, spears, and magic pelted it. A fiery ball finally punched through its head, leaving a sizzling hole that made it tip backwards and crash to the stony cave floor.

Nobody needed Jarn’s command to run for the stairs.

Heart in my throat at the idea of not being able to help Circa, I ran for the stairs with the rest of the party, hoping she’d find a way to survive.

Circa

I saw the group disappear up the stairs through the breach.

Thank the gods.

I finally released some of the power I’d been spending to protect the others. As Woods and Irons, they hadn’t been able to sense the lich’s tendrils of influence creeping through the room like waiting serpents. We had been waging a silent war as I pressed my own influence against hers, barely able to hold it at bay, especially while she battered me again and again with powerful corrupted magic.

My reserves were deep, but I could feel my strength waning.

I stared back at her unblinking, black eyes.

“Tired?” she asked. Her voice was a deathly rasp. She hovered a stone’s throw away across from me. Bodies and rubble littered the floor behind her. The ceiling was caved in and leaking dirt behind her. A half-butchered palefiend near the ruined stairs twitched, tried to push itself up, and then fell back to lay motionless.

“I can’t let you leave here,” I said.

Her hand was raised for another attack, but she let it fall, head tilting as her lips twitched upward. “Let me guess… You’re protecting the godling I smelled? Which one was it, hm? The little bald one? Or was it the girl with the red hair? Perhaps the handsome archer boy?”

“Enough,” I snapped. I couldn’t let her see my fear. How had she sensed him? If she even suspected what Brynn was capable of… She would mark him. She’d watch him until the time was right and try to consume his power. I didn’t know enough about necromancy to say for certain, but she might even be able to absorb some of the benefits from his prestige path. But how did she know?

The lich shrugged her bony shoulders. Her deep black tongue ran over white lips.

A lich. I had read enough descriptions in the ancient tomes to recognize one when I saw it. The class was an epic Forsaken class, and incredibly powerful. I only didn’t know if she was hiding her true power on purpose to lure someone like me in, or if she had recently evolved.

No sense worrying now, Circa.

I summoned all of my power, bundling it in a tight ball around my corestone, forming and shaping it beneath a veil so she wouldn’t feel it coming. I had extended tendrils of magic beneath the floor to leech life force from the dead bodies. It wasn’t an aspect of my power I was proud to use, but my mother always said to weather the storm, you must become the storm.

This creature was going to learn the meaning of it. I only needed to keep her toying with me a little while longer.

“Your magic is strange,” the lich said. She raised an arm, slashing another vibrant green blade out of the ground that knocked me against a wall. My Body of Life ability protected me, but barely. I could sense it nearing its limits. Once it broke… I wouldn’t stand up to her attacks. Not even once.

I kept pooling power beneath the veil. I knew I was drawing too much, but it wouldn’t matter if this worked. And this had to work. Far too much depended on it.

“Abandoned by your friends?” she asked, forcing mock sympathy into her chilling voice. A fist exploded from the wall, smashing me and my Body of Life barrier with impossible force.

I winced, weathering it. Weather the storm, Circa. Then, become it.

I stayed on my feet, eyes resolute as I stared down the approaching Forsaken. I knew enough of liches to know killing her here, even if I could, wouldn’t be the end. She’d slowly regenerate within her phylactery. From there, she’d latch to the dark mana here and be reborn. It would buy Brynn time, but only a measure of it.

A lich with a taste for power wouldn’t give up the hunt for him. She’d be relentless when she rose again. If Brynn didn’t grow quickly enough, she’d devour him, and he wouldn’t stand a chance.

But maybe time was the only thing I could give him. I couldn’t get to her phylactery. I didn’t even know where it was, and she was only toying with me because she knew it. If she thought I could find the relic, she’d put me down like a dog. Her corrupted power was too much for me.

I fended off several more attacks, letting her drift closer and closer, feeling the threads of my Body of Life grow frayed and weaker with each attack.

The lich stopped when she was an arm’s length from me. She reached up, touching my face, which was shrouded by a thin layer of writhing tendrils of mana. They hissed and sizzled against her skin, but she ignored it.

I fed more power into the veiled ball of magic at my core than I ever dared before. It burned. It drew from my life force itself, sapping my vitality and leaving burned pathways in its wake, permanently scarring me. But the power grew. It swelled and swelled until I could barely contain it any longer.

Her eyes were bottomless black pools. Perfect darkness. I saw my own reflection in them.

I thought how my parents would be proud of the woman I saw staring back in those eyes. When I looked at myself, I didn’t see fear. I didn’t see defeat.

I saw the storm.

I pressed my palm to her chest. She smiled, looking down. “What do you—no!”

The veil dropped. The amount of power must have practically blinded her senses.

Too late.

I fed every last bit of myself into the attack. It ripped from me, punching into her and branching out through her rotted veins, filling her with potential energy.

I felt the cold calm of death creeping in, but I had one last task.

“Be gone,” I whispered, activating the final stage of the spell.

The lich’s body burst like an overstuffed bladder.

I smiled, falling to my hands and knees. She would be back, but it would take time. He would have time.

I’d done enough.

I slumped down, lying on my side. The cold drifted out from my center, dimming my awareness. I was sad I wouldn’t see how it all played out. Sad, but relieved. As the cold washed over me, all I felt was the relief of rest. I could finally lay down and rest. I’d done my best, and that was enough.

It was enough.