Rain-slicked windows looked out over the courtyard far below. The reflection of the Necromancer, an image of seriousness overlaid with quickly dribbling raindrops, had paused in motion for the moment. Usually, the Necromancer was a being in full whirlwind mode, rushing from place to place despite his 300 years of age.

The problem with being 300 was that that was effectively the maximum limit you could stretch things. Unlike elementalists or conjurors, who could live up to 1000 years, necromancers were limited by their magic to three human lifetimes. The Necromancer rued this fact, kicked it around the corner in thought, and could see no way to fudge it even a bit. He was near death, and it showed in the pallor of his face, in the grayness of his skin, and in his tired eyes which jumped around erratically of their own volition.

He had to prepare for death.

The baby phoenix was mewling, calling for its mother. Its feathers were flames standing upright from a tightly wound body that was lying on the cold stone floor. The Necromancer had been starving it for weeks now, keeping it from getting the warmth and heat it needed to thrive.

Now that the baby phoenix was near death, its demise would only help the Necromancer on his mission to extend life. In slaying the phoenix, he would gain its powers of regeneration, rejuvenation and uprising to become a new man.

For, the Necromancer was a man. That was his greatest curse and finest blessing. A figure of once-handsome proportions, the Necromancer was hunched over now and used a cane to get around. He scrabbled across the floor like a spider.

The baby phoenix took in one last breath, its beak opening and closing desperately. Then it expired.

The Necromancer picked up the corpse of the magical being, carried it to the operating table, and laid it out almost lovingly. The body was cooling to the touch, its flames having all died out, its eyes glazed and preternaturally still in the semi-darkness gloom. The Necromancer loved moments like this. They were moments of pure power and emotion. Some of the finest moments of his life had taken place over the blood-streaked operating table, with its slantable surface and steel drains for blood to run down. The first time he had raised a zombie successfully had been on a table very much like this in a different city-state, one farther up the river. Once he raised the zombie, he had sent it on a suicide mission crashing through the streets of Jur-Padra-Lin, and hadn’t seen it since.

The baby phoenix was cold to the touch, and very flimsy in its makeup. The Necromancer lifted up one wing, preparing the spot for injection. His hands moved deftly, their precision masked by the nervous tremors that ran up and down his body. A Parkinson’s Disease-like syndrome was afflicting the Necromancer these days, its symptoms varying in length from 10 minutes to 4 hours. As he injected a vial of cloudy black murk into the dead body, depressing the plunger to its full length, it occurred to the Necromancer that this was but one step of several he would have to take if he was to be granted his one last wish.

The Necromancer felt a surge of energy from the phoenix’s form to his; the energy was like a live voltage going through a copper wire. He closed his eyes. The energy waxed and waned and then abruptly disappeared. It was done; the moment was complete.

He went to drink at the lip of the Fountain of Knowledge, praying to the God of Magic that he would have sufficient wisdom to carry out the next steps.

He selected a headless chicken from his kitchen, then brought it to the operating table. The chicken had been thoroughly plucked, and looked ready for broiling for dinner. The Necromancer tapped into its feeble stored energy by waving a wand over the chicken. Doing so caused the chicken’s leg to jerk out in a rapid, singular motion. Once again, twice more, three times, the leg thrashed viciously. The Necromancer was pleased with the reaction, knowing that some chickens wouldn’t move at all if they had been dead beyond a certain point in time. This one was good. That was good.

The chicken, headless and plucked, looked reptilian and was cold to the touch. When the magical wand touched its neck, it got up and began strutting around.

Hurrying after it before it could fall off the operating table, the Necromancer wrapped his arms around the dinner bird and squeezed hard. Tightly muscled wings resisted his entreaties. Magic-cursed flesh began to goosebump under the Necromancer’s firm grip. That was when he knew he had it. The chicken exploded in a burst of flesh and muscle, strips of its body landing on his face, the cold slack sensation bringing with it joy rather than disgust.

This was step two.

The final step was the body of a dead little girl.

She had been run over by a team of racing horses. Her limbs were all akimbo, haphazardly splayed in different directions like a complex hieroglyph come to life. The Necromancer kissed her lovingly and gently on the lips, then adjusted her limbs to be in a full relaxation pose.

Then he set the serrated blade beside her left hand and opened the breast of his robe to expose his hairy nipple to the cold air of the tower.

He began chanting. This turned into a guttural growl and a scream of rage and insensate pain. The dead little girl was coming back to life! She trembled on the operating table. Her eyes flew open. She gripped the blade and stabbed the Necromancer in the heart — as he wanted.

As soon as the blade penetrated the man, the little girl relapsed into death. Blood-soaked garments were held together in weakly pinning fingertips. The Necromancer slumped against a wall, sliding down to the floor in a mess of feces and urine. As he lay dying, it occurred to him that death wasn’t so bad, it didn’t hurt that much…

And then he came back to life.

His eyes were reddish, brilliantly blazing orbs of lamplight.

He was an EMPEROR LICH now, undead and able to cast magics he could only have dreamed about before. The chicken, the little girl, the baby phoenix — all had played their parts in forcing him into an afterlife that was, potentially, unlimited. As an emperor lich, he would live in the night among the ghosts and the skeletons, seeking out the flesh of the unwary to taste and sample with his sharp nipping teeth. Like a vampire, he would crave human blood. His only company would be the friendship of other liches, most of whom lived in a dank, black castle on the highlands of the interior of the continent, where a great forest met a majestic mountain range. He would have to begin the journey to this castle as soon as possible; he was just in time to see the dragons in flight through his window, a good omen…

the end