Chương 12

Part of the instructions the men and I had been given was to reclaim the tolls that the troll had been charging. I found them in the back of the cavern, a literal pile of coins and valuables. Stuffing them in a saddlebag, I carried them out and spent some time thinking about what to do next. I didn't have to go back to the city, I realized. I could go back to my crystal cavern.

The living might leave me alone this time; they could assume that I had been destroyed by the party, or the troll, or some combination of the two. There was an appeal to that plan. I could go somewhere else. Back to Zozheim? To the desert, where humans do not live? To even further north? I sat over the corpse of the troll-child as I thought. I was still thinking when I smelled it. Anger. A moment later, a shadow darkened the shallow cave.

"You have murdered my wife and my son," the figure said. It was smaller than Wek'bah had been. Man sized, in fact. A man, actually.

"Yes," I agreed.

"I have."

"Why?"

"The lord of Pash-nasa bid me to. I was betrayed by the men he sent to accompany me. Now I am deciding what to do next," I answered. The man's anger intensified.

"That bastard," he said. He looked at me.

"You are Inalten?"

"Yes."

"I want to hate you," he said.

"But I know that is like hating the sun for rising. You are simply as you are, and if you were forced to kill my wife I cannot blame you." He pulled a ring out of his pocket.

"But I can command you." The force of the man's will slammed into me. And through me. And it did not affect me as I thought it would. Like the sea crashing against a cliff, I had grown beyond the influence of the rings of control. So when he bid me "Stand in the corner until I decide what to do with you," I resisted. For a moment, just to see that I could. And I could. But then, after the compulsion had passed and I was victorious, I stood in the corner and waited.

The man collected the charred body of his son and tenderly wrapped it in cloth. He vanished. I did not see him for two days, but when he came back his eyes were clear.

"You are going to help me kill every man, woman, and child in Pash-nasa," he said calmly. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. I thought about it for a moment.

"How are we going to do that?"

"Painfully," he answered.

"They will know what grief feels like before we are through with them." I had no answer to that. The man pressed his hand to the back wall of the short cavern and spoke a word. I heard the word and understood it. It was 'vanish,' but it was not the word for vanish in the common tongue. I do not know what language it was, only that the ripple of power that followed caught my attention and the energy of the earth pulsed briefly. The wall vanished, revealing a long winding stairwell leading down.

"Come with me, Tal," he said calmly. I followed him.

"I am nine hundred years old," the man said.

"My wife—she did not always look like that. She was a girl once, pretty as could be. We were young together. The son you murdered was not my first child. This body is not my first body. I am a lich, you see. I tried to make my wife like me before she died, but she rebelled at the last moment, unwilling to bind herself to the phylactery. But I still held her soul in my magicks. I have incarnated her off and on for the past centuries in various forms depending on what was handy when she died.

"But she is beyond my reach now. Thanks to you. Thanks to the lord of Pash-nasa." I considered this news calmly.

"The reason I cannot be angry at you is because I know better than anyone what you are," he continued.

"After all, they call me The Prophet in Zozheim. I was the one who gave them the ritual of your creation. I was hoping to create a perfect body for my wife. You were but a byproduct of the process. But my wife rebelled once more, and I was forced to bind her into the troll instead." He laughed.

"The entire war that followed was for naught. I had my vessels for my wifes next reincarnation, so I did not care what happened to the world. I watched from this cave as it tore itself apart with grim satisfaction." Then he looked at me.

"What bitter irony that you should be the one to take my wife from me, Tal. Not you specifically, but an Inalten. The male byproduct of the ritual meant to make my wife immortal is the vessel which caused her to escape my grasp after all these years." I said nothing.

"Still, you will be the perfect vessel for me. I shall possess you, and then using your body I shall destroy this nation itself! They shall learn to fear me, for I shed the name I was born with and take a new one. Tal, the Destroyer I shall be!" We stepped into a room where a violet crystal floated in the air. Around the room were several skeletons.

"This is my phylactery," he explained.

"It contains most of my knowledge and my soul. This body is a living man whose will I destroyed. He will die when I leave his body, and rot like these others. You shall be my final vessel. The one I use to conquer the world." I listened with faint interest.

"Prepare yourself, Tal. Your empty vessel will be filled with a soul once more!" He spoke a word, and that word was ' release' but not in the language I knew, although I understood it. The corpse he was wearing fell to the ground, and his soul was there, shining darkly. He stepped forward into me, and I felt his will cover mine like pitch covering a diamond.

"What is this?" he exclaimed." What? No! No!" The sound of his soul became more angry and desperate as his will affected me no more than the ring he had placed upon the corpse's hand. But as he pressed his will into me, bits of him made it through. Memories. Knowledge. I knew how to destroy him. And he felt it the moment I learned how.

"No! No, Tal, do not do that," he exclaimed.

"I-what do you wish for, Tal? I will grant you—" Taking the sack of gold that I had been carrying because he had never told me to set it down, I swung it. With a loud"crack!" it slammed into the crystal phylactery. A crack formed in it. I swung again, and again, and again. It shattered. His magic shattered with it. The darkness of his soul became absolute, swirling and undoing itself. The twisted and ugly thing vanished into the void. Just like every other soul I had ever seen. A faint thought crossed my mind.

I wondered what his name had been. I never found out.