The necromancer paced back and forth across the dungeon antechamber, licking his blackened lips in anticipation of his audience with his Lord. How many decades had it been since his last summons? How many years had he spent on the surface, sowing the dark seeds that would soon come to fruition?

  He supposed that was one effect of an unnaturally extended life—the passage of time ceased to have much meaning. It must have been centuries since he and his once-companions had stumbled into this same underground castle, seeking treasure, and instead encountering a powerful lich in his Great Hall.

  How naive an adventurer he'd been back then!

  The necromancer smiled fondly at the memory. If his companions had known what he knew now—the levels of power they could have obtained—perhaps they’d still be alive today. Alas! They refused to accept the lich’s gifts, and so they died, like countless others before them. But not I, he thought with satisfaction, who still lives to witness the dawn of a new age!

  An age of darkness that he, Petrick Pitchlips, had helped nurture.

  The door at the front of the chamber opened. A dreadsworn stood in the hollow frame, her ice-blue eyes cutting through the gloom. A shiver found Petrick’s spine, but not because he was cold. Sensations of the flesh had ceased long ago. Rather, he was humbled by the sheer power of this woman’s presence, whose true age made his mere hundreds seem like that of a child’s.

  “It is time,” she said, and motioned for Petrick to follow.

  Inside, the Great Hall was just as he remembered, a huge room whose ceiling seemed impossibly high for a chamber so far underground. Ghostlights—the stolen souls of unfortunate adventurers—drifted around in those dark reaches, casting a greenish hue upon the round pool in the center of the room. A small, winged humanoid hung above it, hovering lifelessly in a bubble of magical stasis.

  Past all this, on his stone-hewn throne flanked by his undead guards, sat Abramelin the lich, the undying Lord to whom Petrick swore his oath three hundred years ago.

  “My Lord,” he said, bowing immediately.

  The necromancer rose only when he heard Abramelin’s voice ring throughout the chamber and in his own head, commanding him to approach. The lich had the appearance of a young man, with a full face a trim beard, looking perhaps as he once did in life, four millenia past.

  This, however, was an illusion.

  As Petrick neared the throne, that solid image wavered, and underneath were glimpses of the white skull beneath dessicated skin, bright-red orbs floating in those bony sockets. Petrick knew this was a privilege of the magical connection between them, the master-servant relationship that granted him power and allowed him to see his Lord’s truest form.

  “A beautiful thing, is she not?” the lich said, pointing to the small creature floating above the still surface of the pool. “She may be the last of her kind... A thousand years we hunted for one like her.”

  The fae had the look of a sleeping child, turning slowly in midair, flaxen hair hanging limp off her delicate shoulders. “Not as impressive as the myths claim,” said Petrick.

  “Then you are a fool! This one fae could bring down this entire castle around us, were it not for my spell of slumber.” The lich’s cackle was wind through dead leaves, before he changed the subject. “Sylax tells me the surface preparations are ready.”

  Petrick bowed again. “They are, Lord,” he said. “The sacrifices have been procured, and your followers are in place to receive the transmission.”

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  “Then let us lay eyes upon our quarry, one last time… Sylax?”

  The dreadsworn walked over to the edge of the shallow pool, the pale skin of her shapely legs and ample bosom showing through the slits and low cut of her black dress. Unlike Petrick and Abramelin under his illusions, Sylax looked not a day past 30. This was a unique benefit of her being a member of the lich’s harem. The raven-haired woman set her fingers to work, weaving the scrying spell that immediately sprung to life across the water’s surface.

  A series of images flashed in sequence: a young man sitting alone in a dark room, the blue light of a computer screen reflected in his glasses. Another in a basement, thumbs whirring furiously on a controller. Yet another, walking up a series of winding stairs, his thin arms struggling with the weight of a few grocery bags. Another laying in bed, drooling, a VR headset snug over his eyes.

  “Ha! Truly pitiful,” the Lich exclaimed, gleefully watching these four young men, along with two others, depicted in the waters of the pool. “No ambition! Disgusting!”

  “How easily they will be corrupted,” Sylax purred, a thin smile finding her lips.

  “Even those who may slip through our grasp, who among them has the potential to become the White Knight?” the lich asked, as the images continued to cycle. “Absolute weaklings, each and every one!”

  “Only you could think to subvert the Prophecy in this manner, Lord,” said Petrick.

  “Yes, the others like me always did lack vision… Too content in their underground lairs,” the lich mused. “They think a return to the surface is impossible, but I know better. Four thousand years I have waited!” The lich rose from his throne and grasped his staff, that ancient obsidian steel weapon tipped with a dark crystal. “In the chaos soon to come, when ash blacks the sky and fire rents the ground, we will emerge to raise an eternal Empire with I, Abramelin the Staff, as sole ruler!”

  With a twist of his staff, the fae came forward to hover in front of the lich. Two of his undead guards, bidden by telepathic command, came to stand directly under the creature, holding between them a wide, metal dish.

  Power began emanating from the dark crystal in the staff, then, wracking the fae with violent tremors, twisting her body into the shape of a ball. There was a brief flash of blinding light. When it dissipated, a red crystal orb, smooth as glass, hovered in place where the fae had just been a moment ago.

  At another twist of that wicked staff, the crystal orb shattered into pieces, which fell into the dish held by the two undead below. Behind them, images of the six adolescents continued to manifest across the surface of the pool.

  The lich sat back down. “Petrick, my loyal servant,” he said, “are you ready to travel to the otherworld and put into motion the final steps of my plan?”

  “Of course, Lord,” Petrick replied. If the necromancer’s heart hadn’t ceased beating years ago, it would have swelled upon hearing Abramelin’s words. “I will not fail you.”

  “Then take three shards from the dish,” the lich instructed. “One to travel there, one to bring the boy back, and one for you to return… Where an honored position in my eternal court will be waiting.”

  Petrick bowed deeply one final time, before proceeding to the dish and taking out his three red crystal shards with a necrosed hand. He placed two in a small cloth sack, which he secured to the belt around his robe. The third he brought to the edge of the circular pool. When he tossed it into the water, those swirling images slowed, until there was only one shimmering in place, depicting the boy with skinny arms.

  “You have your target,” the Lich said. “Now go forth!”

  The necromancer nodded and stepped over the lip of the pool. The water was only ankle deep, but as soon as he was fully in with both feet, he began to sink, and sink, and just before the head of Petrick Pitchlips disappeared under the open portal completely, his blackened lips broke apart into a wide smile.

  Then he was gone.

  “So it begins,” Sylax whispered. The cycling of images in the pool had started again, this time depicting only five individuals.

  “Indeed…” Abramelin the Staff Lich said, gazing upon the red crystal shards waiting to be distributed to his other servants. How long he’d imagined this very moment! The undead mage’s triumphant cackle echoed throughout the giant hall. Those weak, bickering mortals of the surface Empire of Emrys had no idea what awaited them.

  “Send in my next loyal servant!” he commanded, his red orbs blazing with zeal.