Page 2 of The Lich's Leverage

What if I just went to Cospire and asked to be reassigned? Told her I can’t handle it.

Fuck, I’m going to die.

Everyone is going to know that I’m a failure, and I failed so badly I got myself killed. They’ll say it’s my fault and I deserved it.

Lyla’s hand on my shoulder again.

“Where did you go there, Heather?”

“Oh, just your standard mental spiral.”

I tried to sound lighthearted. If anyone would understand coping via humor, it would be another therapist.

“Let’s go for a walk.”

I nodded, even though what I wanted was to curl up into a pile of soft blankets forever.

“Sure. And you can tell me all about this new yoga class you are running.”

“Heather, have you ever seen a group of monsters doing downward dog? It’s a sight to behold.”

Despite the chaos in my brain, a genuine laugh bubbled out of me. It was quite the mental image.

“Honestly, Heather, we could all learn to leave behind a bit of our human self-consciousness and be a bit more monster doing yoga.”

“Sounds like I need to come to yoga class.”

“Oh, you must!”

She pulled me out of my chair and dragged me for a walk, linking her arm with mine. I perked up once I realized she was taking me to our favorite place. The kitchen. By the time she had bribed the yeti chef into making us some chocolate cookies, I felt almost okay.

Chapter 2

Vedrac

If I still had a working heart, it would have been racing like a train. I’d never been in prison before. Thousands of living bodies crammed into one square mile of building. And the energy. My gods, it was making me feel drunk just being around it. The adrenaline-soaked monsters constantly existing on a knife edge of anger and sadness. The guards awash with cortisol from the stress. And all of it tinged with darkness. A menace. I could feel it all.

I wanted to drink it all in. It was like a buffet laid out in front of me for the taking. But then that darkness would seep into the corners of my being. For a lich, the saying ‘you are what you eat’ is painfully true. I’d only eaten dumb animals for nearly a decade. No people or monsters since I had taken the last soul of the Legreman mages. Now I was not only hungry, but purposeless. I didn’t care that I was in prison for my final years. I’d done everything I’d intended to.

I stood in the cell block, taking it all in. Assessing which characters were going to be the most trouble. I spotted an orc watching me. Large and confident. His energy field felt vibrant and filled with passion and purpose. Things I had left behind now. He smiled at me. I gave him a smile back. No point in making enemies for no reason. And genuine smiles were probably going to be rare to find here. The noise of the other monsters and the tempting energy was quickly too much for me. After years of being alone and moving in the shadows, it was hard to handle all of this. I retreated to my cell and hoped for quiet.

It was a tiny stone room with one bed. At least I had a place of my own. During nearly a century of hunting, I’d rarely returned to the home I had as a human. Eventually, I came back to find a small family there, rebuilding the damaged roof and making it livable again. I didn’t have it in me to turn them out into the snow. And the object that held my soul was deep beneath the foundations. So, I’d left it behind for good. It was perhaps the last time I’d really felt anything close to empathy. I was empty now.

I lay down on the dusty bed. It was hard and uncomfortable, but it was mine. The bed I would sleep on until lack of food turned me into dust, too. With the door closed, I felt almost snug. My body was weary, but this was all too new and noisy for me to fully relax and sleep. I wrangled my mind into a meditative state, chanting the words that I knew like the back of my hand until eventually the noise fell away.

As my mind observed the magical weave that flows through all of reality, I felt a tugging on my focus. Even before my transformation, I’d practiced meditation extensively. I could usually push away these things. But it kept pulling at me. I thought it might be another magic user in the weave. But it kept up its distraction with a rhythmic quality, like a heartbeat. Curiosity got the better of me. I turned my attention to it properly. It kept thrumming. I rode the threads until I saw the one that was calling to me. It was both dark and bright, like lightning in a night sky. In all my years, I’d never seen anything like it. Whatever it was attached to was nearby. In the prison. I walked the thread and at the end, I fell into what felt like a storm.

Energy buffeted me, turning me over and over. It was feminine. Beautiful. Powerful. Endlessly turning, changing. Emotions I hadn’t felt in a long time laced through it. Love. Caring. Concern. Tenderness. I was spinning wildly. Caught in the tempest, but not wanting to escape. Lavender clouds enveloped me softly, easing the wildness of the storm.

I bathed in it. It was the closest to being alive that I’d been since the ritual. Feelings that I hadn’t let in for a long time infused me. The cold couldn’t touch me here. If there was such a thing as perfection, this was it. Whoever this was, I had to meet them. The energy bored into me, penetrating the place where a living soul had once resided, and wrapped its tendrils around the remnants of my being. We joined in the most intimate manner, me and this person I had never met. But somehow it was like this storm had always been waiting for me.

Shouts tore me from my meditation. My eyes flew open, and it took a moment for the disorientation of the disruption to ease.

“Time for food.”

I wanted to return to the weave and my storm.

“Not now,” I snapped.

---