2E 445
Lia sat naked within the morgue, on the stone workbench with
a freshly cleaned and sharpened knife, a piece of parchment, and two rubies previously
engraved with the runes necessary for later. Her robes were folded neatly and
out of the way on the nearby shelves next to her brother’s heart. Anton’s body
had been reanimated and now stood ready for any commands she may have for him.
The empty hole in his chest was a gory reminder of the recent massacre. Her old
pallid skin wasn’t far from the bloodless dead skin that Anton’s reanimated
corpse wore. The runes carved into her arms that allowed her control over her
undead army continued to fester and weep. They would continue this disgusting
display for as long as they were active. Lia didn’t much mind, she had grown
used to it.
The unclothed necromancer looked at the runes written on the parchment in front
of her. She had to study these carefully as even the smallest alteration would
mean that the process would fail. She swallowed away the fear and pushed the knife
into the skin covering her cheek. The blade sunk deeper and deeper until she
felt it reach bone. Tears welled up in her eyes from the pain, but she blinked
them away. She sliced the blade through her skin, starting just above her mouth
all the way along to the edge of her earlobe. Deep red blood oozed from the
wound. The pain was so much worse than she had expected but there was no going
back now.
She cut into her cheek again, this time higher, starting just below her left
eye. The salt from her watering eyes ran down her face into the open wound and
caused even more stinging. She let out a hoarse scream to try and relieve some
of the pain, but it persisted anyway. As the knife returned to her cheek, she
pulled it downwards, connecting the two horizontal cuts. The blood that ran
from the wound was thicker than she had expected it to be. A rich dark crimson
that offered a visualisation to the pain that screamed at her from inside her
own head. She pushed past it and returned the blade to her flesh, preforming a
second vertical cut connecting the other side of the two horizontal ones. Her
eyes were watering beyond control as the pain persisted. Blood dripped onto the
stone surface of the workbench below her. She moved the parchment, careful to
avoid it becoming obscured by her own blood. Then she slid the blade underneath
the section of skin she had cut around and lifted it free. The pain from this
exceeded any that came before it and she allowed herself another scream of
agony as she pulled the slab of skin free from her face.
As the skin hit the stone workbench with an uncomfortably wet thud Lia allowed
herself the chance to openly sob through the pain. The first part of the
process was complete.
“Get me a clean cloth from the infirmary!” She screamed at the corpse that had
once been her brother. It shambled out of the room, leaving her alone with
nothing but the pain and blood. She tried to focus on the runes written out on
the parchment, but the pain made it almost impossible to think about anything
other than the pain itself. Another scream escaped as the corpse of her brother
returned with the cloth. She snatched the material out of the corpse’s hand and
began to clean the wound.
“Get me a hand mirror, make sure it’s not broken!” The corpse once again left
the room. Lia wiped away as much blood as she could while she waited for the
zombie to return. When it did, she took the mirror and inspected the injury.
Three strips of exposed muscle were visible through the area of missing skin.
As she moved her mouth and nose the muscles went from taut to lax. Seeing them
exposed like this was a strange, and not at all comfortable experience. What was
to come would be a lot worse. She picked up the knife and began to cut the
muscles closest to her nose. The agony returned as the knife tore away at the
fibres of the muscle. It didn’t take long for her to have cut through the first
set. Before she had a chance to think better of it, she started on the second
collection of fibres. The lefthand side of her mouth began to slump downward as
the muscles responsible for holding it up were disconnected. Fresh blood pumped
itself free from the muscle tissue. Lia took the knife to the final bundle of
fibres and cut at them with less precision than the last ones as the pain began
to interrupt her careful slices. Eventually the muscles holding the left side
of her mouth upward were all cut loose. She screamed once again, but the sound
was muffled as the lefthand side of her mouth was unable to open.
She began to loudly cry as she looked at her ruined visage in the mirror. Her
face was mutilated beyond repair. Still, it would all be worth it in the end.
“Get me pain relief, quickly!” The undead corpse of her brother vanished,
leaving her and her ruined face alone. She took the time to look at the runes
on the parchment, this time forcing herself to focus on the lines through the
agony. Each line needed to be reproduced perfectly, the smallest alteration
would deny her the immortality she craved. Time began to blur as her grip on
reality slipped with the intensity of the pain. She had no idea if Anton’s
corpse had taken ten minutes or ten hours to return with the requested drugs.
Still, eventually he returned with a syringe full of a murky green liquid. She
took it from him and looked towards her arm before lining up the needle of the
syringe with a vein, but the double vision made it almost impossible. When she
had done her best, she pushed the needle into her arm and depressed the
plunger. Almost immediately a sensation of giddy weightlessness overcame her as
the overwhelming pain started to feel like it was happening to someone else.
She felt almost detached from her own body.
“That’s good shit Anton!” She joked to the corpse of her brother, the words
sounded slurred as her mouth refused to open on the lefthand side. This caused
her to giggle at the sound of her own voice. She quickly looked down at the
mirror, knife, and runes printed onto the parchment. This was the final stage
of the process she would ever carry out while alive. If it went wrong, she
would not be able to finish.
Lia picked up the knife, giggling at how light it felt in her hand. She then
picked up the mirror and held it up to the destroyed remains of her face. As
the knife contacted her skull a painful sting erupted across her entire face.
It was so painful that it tore through the effects of the drugs and overwhelmed
all her senses. The intense sensation ran through every nerve within her head,
overwhelming her hearing, sight, and even taste. Eventually it faded. Lia
looked at the runes, focused on what she decided was going to be the first line
and returned the knife to her skull. As the metal blade scraped itself across
her exposed bone, carving the line into her skull, that loud, painful sting
exploded across her entire nervous system. This was only the first of hundreds
of lines, each one had to be perfect, and each one would hurt just as much as
this first one. Over the next few hours Lia carefully copied the runes, line
for line, into her skull. She barely felt human by the time she came to the end
of the process. Lia focused on the last line, her mind had collapsed into pain
induced insanity, all that she knew was that she had to finish carving these
runes; so she made the final act of self-violence and carved it into her skull.
Lia’s heart stopped beating.
She gasped for air but found that no matter how much she tried to breath it
wasn’t enough. Her lungs had shut down, so they were unable to draw oxygen from
the air. Lia instinctively gripped uselessly as her throat. Her hearing started
to fade as darkness closed in around her. All her organs started to fail as
they used up their finite supply of blood. It didn’t take long for her body to
collapse to the stone workbench. As darkness overtook her the last thing she
remembered before she lost all awareness was reaching towards the reanimated
corpse of her brother for help.
Then everything vanished.
Lia’s brain stopped functioning, and with it so did her panicked dying thoughts.
She had died.
Her soul tried to escape her mortal body, only to find itself bound to her
skeleton.
Consciousness slowly returned to her. Although she found that she wasn’t
looking out of her eyes. She was instead looking at her corpse from the perspective
of the engraved rubies sitting on the workbench.
“Pick up those rubies and face them towards me.” Her voice was quiet as both
her tongue and lungs were now dead. Still the command was magically understood
by her thrall who did as it was told. Part of the runes now etched into her
skull allowed her to maintain control of her thralls as a lich.
As the zombie held the rubies towards her, she was able to see herself from a
third-person perspective. It was a strange sensation. Still all the pain,
effects from the drugs, and the madness had vanished since she was no longer
connected to her brain or nervous system which was a massive advantage. She
used the knife to remove her old eyes and replaced them with the rubies. To
finish the process, she proceeded to hack away at the remains of her flesh,
extricating her skeleton from the confines of her now dead body. This was much
easier than everything that had come before it as she no longer felt any pain.
Her soul was bound, for the rest of time, to her bones.
Death was no longer a threat.
After she had ripped the skin and muscles away and had torn out her now useless
organs, she got redonned her robes.
Lia had died, but she had been reborn into undeath as a lich.
As she pulled her hood up and over her exposed skull, she felt set free for the
first time; free from the overshadowing, overwhelming, all-consuming fear of
death.
It was time to contact Trux, she had one more question to ask, for the sake of
her dear brother.
