[Orin]

Orin looked about the ruins of his altar room in rage and despair. Decades of work undone in one instant, and he lacked all but the basic knowledge of the dark arts. It seemed even his power had been stripped from him. Moving up to the altar, he gazed upon tortured face of the young woman murdered in the name of power. Her face would be locked in that picture of inhuman horror and pain, her soul stripped and rended, and the open cavity of her chest, missing the heart that once pumped blood through her now pale flesh. With a scream of rage, he struck her head, knocking the body from the altar. If he could, he would raise her again and strip the life from her once more, and take years to do it.

Ever practical, though, Orin suppressed his rage and started rummaging through what was left. His spellbook was mostly destroyed, but a few simple spells were left. It would be enough of a base for him to relearn. Perhaps in time his memories and power would return, and the tome would once more bristle with the dark power of spells lost to the world for a good reason. For the moment, he would have to transcribe the spells into a smaller tome, for the 3'x3'x1' tome was impractical to carry around.

He made his way through his lair, cursing as he went through each room, most of which had been destroyed. Nothing of value remained, except in his laboratory. There he had a backup spellbook. Small, able to carry the few spells he used when traversing the world. It was more than enough to carry what little was left to him. The process was slower and more difficult than he remembered, but he did not hurry, lest he cause more damage. Once his work was done, he placed the book within his robes, and made his way towards the entrance. He paused within the ante chamber, looking back at the stairs, and cursed again. As he turned away, he recalled an incantation to seal his home. He had no wish to do so, but he no longer had the power to defend it, and he had no wish for others to discover it and perhaps use the latent power within its walls from years of being subjected to the dark arts. Prudence won. If he regained his powers, he would be able to unlock it again, and if he did not, then it would not matter.

He raised his arms, hands weaving as words of power erupted from his lips, and for a moment he remembered what it was like to ride the waves of magic. Then it was gone as the last word was spoken. A strangeness passed over him, and he walked out. Once without, he paused and looked back, puzzled, and wondered why he was here. Orin shrugged and trudged onwards. He had work to do, and he knew not how much time he had left to do it in.

[Orin]

Orin sat within a glade, pondering what he had relearned since his accident. Since he had come to this place, he had made up time by removing the corpses from the city and studying them out in the wilderness. The lich knew his memory was yet to be complete with understanding of the human body, let alone all the humanoids he remembered studying. However, it seemed that the knowledge came quicker now than first he had studied. Perhaps it was the fact he no longer required sleep, or that his studies simply unlocked his memories as he went. What did it matter as long as the time required to regain his powers were lessened?

It truly dawned on him then that he no longer required sleep, and that that more than passingly strange. Orin lifted his hands and studied them in silence for a long time. Perhaps it was the amusement of the gods to let him know, or perhaps recognition of what he had studied and worked with his life long. The signs of decay were rampant. Quickly, he stood and stripped his clothing so he stood naked within that glade. Truly, his body was decaying as a corpse would. "What happened to me?" he whispered to himself. Had he been successful and truly turned into a lich? If so, then why had he lost his memories? He had studied the lich transformation for fifteen years, and he thought he had gained every scrap of information upon it and never once had he come across an occurance of the lich losing their memory. Perhaps a trick of the gods? Did they fear his rise to power? He laughed then, his voice was nothing human, and there was no bit of warmth to it. "Do you fear me?!" He screamed at the silent heavens, "Tremble then! I shall never stop! I! WILL!l KNOW!"

With a renewed strength and purpose, Orin clothed himself and stalked back towards the town. Tonight he would being to study the process of death and pain. Quickly enough, he was among the buildings, stalking through the shadows. As he walked, he pulled a vial from within his robes. Luckily, one of the things he remembered was the use of herbs and alchemy, and so he could assemble a simple anesthetic what would aid in taking one of these monkeys. He made his way to the poorer section, not wanting to raise too much suspicion, and beggars, thieves and their ilk were rarely missed. The dark mage had seen a particular woman many times, and something about her struck a note, a memory perhaps, yet he could not recall it. Perhaps as he worked on her he would remember.

Orin stopped at the edge of the alley where he knew she resided, a beggar who attempted whoring at times, but he knew this night she recovered from good business last night. He unstoppered the vial and poured some of the liquid on a strip of cloth, and secreted the concotion. Keeping it just far enough from his face, not wanting to test at this moment whether he was now impervious to its effects, he started coughing and limping down the alley. As he predicted, she slept lightly and awoke to stare at him as he came down. True to her kind, she cursed him soundly, and in no uncertain terms told him to find another alley to die in. The lich faked a stumble and fell atop her, ignoring her curse, the rag falling without error over her mouth and nose where he held it against her struggles until she fell limp.

So simple, he thought as he stood up and put the cloth away. Hefting her over his shoulder, he quickly moved from the spot, through the alleys when he could and as deep in the shadows as possible when he could not until he made it from the city. From there it was a long hike to a natural cave he had discovered and used for his experiments. It was well hidden and it had only been through pure chance he had discovered it. To any normal nose it reeked of death after weeks of use by the undead necromancer. An altar had been set up in the largest part of the cavern, only two other sections to it, one where he burned the bodies he found, and the other where he meditated upon what he had learned. It might perhaps be wise to set up a place in the town as well to defer suspicion, but that could wait until the next day.

He laid the unconscious woman upon the altar and without hesitation bound her to it. Just as he was finishing, she started coming to, and screamed when she found herself in the darkness. "Shut up, monkey," snarled the lich, and struck her across the face, causing her to wimper, "There will be plenty of time to scream, but I must work. If you wish to live, you'll keep your silence." He started lighting candles, and with the light, the woman stared at her captor. By now, he truly started looking like the undead, and in the dim light, his eyes seemed to glow a burning red. On the verge of screaming again, the lich turned to look at her, the force of his gaze freezing the sound within her throat.

Finally, she managed, "Who are you? And what are you going to do to me?" Fear was rank in her voice, almost as overpowering as the stench of decay that surrounded Orin.

"I am going to study you," said Orin, purring as he soaked up the fear. "You see, I study the dead, and part of being dead... is dying. Which is what we are going to do tonight." His smile made her scream again, and his laughter was a sadistic counterpoint.

Within his new altar room was a rude shelf, not a proper one to keep tomes, but then he had no real tomes. He only had those with which he recorded his deathly experiments. Each one was written in a precise script, and accompanied by detailed pictures. They would be invaluable to a physician when finished if not for the grisly way in which the information had been gathered; upon study, one would find that the tomes were written in the blood of animals. Orin took up an unopened one and placed it on another rude stand made of stone, much like a miniature of the altar. Drawing his knife, he cut the woman, producing a cry of pain that cut stopped her screams, and she began to cry. Ignoring her, he dipped a feather he found into the cut and started using her blood to write in the tome.

"Please don't do this," she whimpered, "I didn't do anything to you. I'll be good. Gods, please help me."

The lich laughed, "Gods? The gods won't help you, monkey. No more than they helped the others I studied for the past sixty years. Know this as you go to meet them, the gods care nothing for you, but I do. I care very much for you and how you can serve me. Would you like me to be your god, monkey?" The woman looked at him in horror, wondering how she could ever worship such a horrible creature as a god, and it must have shown upon her face, for the lich laughed again, "As you will, but you will die just the same." Then he truly began his work.

Few had the stomach for vivisection, and perhaps that was among the reasons there were few who could turn to the dark arts, even among those who followed dark powers, or knew little conscience. As he slowly opened her up, he kept notes written in her blood, and pictures and diagrams about how her body seemed to work. After a few hours, she ceased her screams as he began writing, and cried at him, "Please! Stop! This is wrong!" At the words, Orin ceased writing, his head snapping up and turning to face her. Eyes narrowed, and he turned back to his tome as she continued to cry.

When he finished, he put the feather down as well as his dagger and came to stand over her, looking down at her, and he whispered, "Yes, I know now why you were so familiar. Woman, is your mother still alive?"

The woman blinked up at him, confused, and said, "I don't know, she disappeared ten years ago while adventuring to make money to feed me. Nobody knows what happened."

The smile that crossed Orin's face held truly evil delight as he asked, "I know what happened to her. Would you like me to tell you?"

[Orin]

Orin looked up from his work, frowning as one of his sentinels sent word that there were intruders within his lair. The dark mage wondered if someone had gained word of him, but thought it unlikely. Even if someone had managed to put some of his acts together and suspect him, it would be nearly impossible to find this place. He had spent years fashioning special wards that only the most powerful divination should be able to pierce. Those who scanned this area would see no living or unliving creature, just a few corpses buried just beneath the earth. No, it was likely they had just stumbled upon his lair, though he wondered what would bring them out here.

He shrugged and sent mental commands to his minions to take care of the stupid monkies. Orin didn't have the time to deal with them himself, and his minions were more than capable. That finished, he left his laboratory and went into his altar room. The room was a massive vault 50' from front to back, and 30' from the floor to the rafters. At the far end of the room was a dais 10' above the floor with an altar made of bones and a massive slab of basalt. Before the altar was a pit where the bones of hundreds rested. The altar and the floor around it was stained black with blood from decades of sacrifice, and the room was saturated with dark energy.

With each step into the room, the dark mage grew stronger as he gathered in the power stored within his lair. Already his minions had bound a young woman to the altar, and she watched him with terror filled eyes as he approached and mounted the dais. From within the folds of his robes he drew a wickedly curved knife stained as much as the atlar and floor with blood that radiated dark energy of its own. As he achieved the dais, he began to incant dark words that reverberated throughout the altar room, and his lair began to hum as it 'awoke', revealing its true power. With each word his power increased, going beyond the bounds he might normally hold. This spell would reveal the next part of his journey to lichdom. When he had achieved it, he would no longer require the power of his lair to achieve his goals, though he would certainly not give it up.

The woman looked on in fear, paralyzed by the magic, and incapable of screaming as the mage began to carve dark symbols in her naked flesh. Orin absently noted that the doors of the altar room had opened, but he was too far into the spell to stop. He looked up at four figures who slowly stalked into the room, still incanting, and then dismissed them. The spell was almost finished.

"Cease your dark magic, fiend!" cried out one of the figures, a tall man in steel armor. He bore a sword that glowed softly with power. The others were a woman in leathers bearing a longbow with a quiver of arrows, and two other men. One in the robes of a priest, and the second in the robes of a mage.

Still Orin ignored them, and lifted a crystal orb, placing it in the hollow of his sacrifice's throat. The last syllable echoed through the room, and he quickly thrust the dagger into the woman's chest, and cut upwards. There was a sickening tearing and cracking sound as the magic blade opened her ribcage. This time she did scream, a scream that caused the intruders to halt and shiver. The dark mage cut out the woman's heart, and let it pump the blood left into it over the crystal orb. The orb lifted off the woman and flashed brightly, revealing ancient ruins from man height, and then a view from a bird's height. It lasted only a few seconds before the orb disappeared. The mage smiled and cut the dead woman's bonds, casting her into the pit along with her heart.

The warrior growled, "Demon! You will die for this abomination! Pray to your dark gods, for soon you shall meet them!" Without signaling, his companions spread out.

"Gods?" replied Orin. "I worship no gods. You are mistaken, and I am no demon. I have no traffic with such creatures, monkey. You would have done better had you passed this place by, or let my servants see you to your grave. You have trespassed upon not only my home, but upon my work. That makes me angry."

"Your undead minions cannot stop our righteous cause, demon!" said the knight. "We destroyed all of them, and now you are alone!"

The dark mage laughed, a truly mirthful sound, and said, "All of them? I think not. A few skeletons and zombies perhaps, but I have other minions." He snapped his fingers and dark shapes began to appear within the room, shadows with wicked claws, more skeletons began to walk from niches in the walls, and zombies as well. The pillars that supported the roof began to writhe and moan, claws reaching out towards the intruders, and in some cases swords, axes and all manner of weapons. "You see? But best of all-!" Orin incanted a short phrase and from beside the dais stepped two creatures out of nightmare. They looked to have been cobbled together from many different types of creatures in various stages of decay. Each one stood eighteen feet in height and wore various pieces of armor. One bore a wicked looking axe, and the other a sword and shield.

The intruders had stopped dead as the hall came to 'life', and they stared in horror. The knight shook his head, pushing aside his fear, and with a grim determination, said, "Send forth your minions, foul necromancer, we shall kill them, just as we did the others. You but stave your own demise off by mere minutes." The others nodded in agreement, and while they were filled with fear, they showed the same resolve as the knight.

Orin smiled, waving his hand, and the hall returned as it was. When his two great guardians settled back into their niches, he jumped upon the altar and then floated down until he stood before the pit. Opening his arms, he said, "Come then, and fight me." They came.

The knight charged, loosing a battle cry, shield raised and sword held low. The mage began to incant, and the priest to pray. The woman held for a moment, then drew a bead on the necromancer and fired. Orin, meanwhile, spoke a few words, and from within the pit the bones began to stir. As the arrow drew in on him, the stirred and then moved. Just as the arrow was about to pierce his heart, a bone shard tore from the pit and knocked the arrow aside. Other bones began to rise and spin around him. Each bone was sharp as a razor, and the knight found himself similarly blocked, as each swing of his sword was met with bone.

The mage finished his spell and five missiles of pure energy tore from his hand and sped at Orin. The necromancer smiled, and incanted himself, ignoring the arrows and sword being directed at him. A shadow fell over him, obscuring him from the view of the intruders, and the orbs, passing through his bone shield, struck it. With each strike it trembled, and the final missile caused it to shatter. As it vanished, they were once more staring at the still smiling Orin. The priest finished next, a shimmering hammer of pure holy energy forming within his hand, and he quickly cast it at the dark mage. Once again, Orin incanted, and a blade of darkness formed before him, and sped out to meet the hammer. When they met, an explosion tore the room, casting the archer and mage aside.

Orin laughed, "Now it's my turn." He waved a hand and the bone shield deflected the blow of the knight, and quickly formed a massive hand that slammed into the man, hurling him across the room; they then returned to the pit. Turning to the priest, Orin incanted again, holding his hand palm out at the cleric. A claw of darkness shot from his palm, and grabbed the priest by the throat. Struggling, it lifted him into the air, holding him for a moment. The others were starting to recover and they watched as Orin closed his hand and the shadow hand did likewise. The priests body hit the floor with a dull thud, blood gushing from his neck, and his head hit the floor a second later, staring out in horror and pain.

"Beast!" cried the knight as he gained his feet. "I take your head from your shoulders before this is done!"

Orin incanted again, and a dark, shadowy aura sprung up around him. A second incantation and the archer, who had started to draw her bow, dropped the weapon and clutched at her throat where death now crept, suffocating her. The knight charged again, and swung at the necromancer, who stepped aside. As the blade passed through the aura surrounding the necromancer, it spread up the sword onto the man's body, forming a haze about him. He then screamed as the pain hit him, stumbling back, and if there were more light it might seem as though he were somehow... less there.

Meanwhile, the mage had started casting another spell, and lightning arched from his hand at Orin. Glancing at the oncoming lightning, the necromancer had only an instant to pull a small clay disc from his robe and break it in half. In that instant, another shadow fell over him, and absorbed the lightning shattering with the impact. Orin responded with another incantation, pulling a bag from his robe, and from it, he took a fine powder. As he finished the incantation, he blew the powder in the mages direction, an arcane wind speeding it up. The dust struck the mage, who stopped, eyes wide in amazement, and stared down at his body. It was riddled with hundreds of holes from which blood began to pour, and he screamed as within the dust continued to move around, tearing his insides apart.

Orin walked past the screaming, writhing knight towards the feebly struggling archer. By time he reached her, the knight room fell silent as the mage died, and the knight seemed to have vanished from existence. He waved his hand and the invisible hand released her throat. Another incantation and hands of shadow moved from his palms and grabbed the woman on either leg, lifting her into the air upside down before the dark mage. She spit on him, and said, "Creature, burn in hell!"

The necromancer ignored the spittle on his robes, and smiled, "Oh, I think not, monkey. I was going to preserve you, but..." He shrugged and lifted his hands, slowly he drew them apart. The woman grunted in pain, then began to moan, and finally she screamed as a slow, sickening tearing sound filled the air. She screamed for several minutes, and then it ended. Orin flicked his wrists and the shadow hands tossed the two halves of the torn woman aside.

- - -

Orin smiled down at the young woman, purring, "Such a fiery woman she was, and such a sweet death. Soon, you'll join her, and know as you do, that your death will bring back my power to do such again."

The young whore cursed and screamed as Orin went back to his methodical vivisection, smiling while he painfully killed the young woman.

[Orin]

It was finally time to attempt to raise a corpse. He was fairly sure he had recovered enough power to do it. Orin had practiced several times on animals to perfect his formula, and while the one for raising a human was slightly different, it was basically the same. It just required more power and a few different phrases. In time he would shorten the spell, making it easier to raise corpses, but that would require more research and practice. He stood within an abandoned house in L`Ombre, the former home of the armor encased corpse that lay upon the floor.

The room he was in throbbed with dark power, wards glowing on each wall to help prevent others from interrupting him, and also to aid his magic. In a corner with several rats with cut throats, and in a cage on a nearby table was a cage with five more live rats. The corpes lay within a pentagram drawn in blood, and at each point writhed shadows. The lich allowed himself a brief smile then draw out his dagger, and began to incant. With each syllable a faint moan in the room grew stronger, and the wards began to hum. The lich walked to the cage, taking out one of the rats, he continued to incant as he walked to the pentagram. Careful not to step on it, he swiftly cut the rat's throat over one of the points. The blood gushed into the shadows and the pentagram began to glow softly. Four more times the lich returned to the cage, killing each of the rats at a different point, and tossing the corpses into the shadows where they were engulfed. When he finished, the pentagram glowed the same murderous red that his eyes now did. His incanting came to a climax, and with the final syllable, the room died.

"Rise!" commanded the lich. The corpse twitched, and then slowly it made its way to its feet. When the corpse stood before him, he let out a triumphant laugh, and struck the armor of the creature. "Finally! I think I'll keep you around." With a wicked smile, Orin mockingly said, "'Guff strong! Need a'mo' and steel!'" Unable to contain himself, the lich laughed again, steadying himself with the table. "Oh, Guff certainly is strong, and you are far more useful to me now than you were bashing innocents. Come!" The lich turned to leave the house, and the armed and armored corpse of Guff followed him. With Orin humming a jolly tune, the lich and the corpse made their way into the town.

Orin hadn't been this happy since he had finished his quest in search of the way to transform himself into a lich.