Tybalt’s body burst into renewed motion. His hands pushed him up off the ground.

  Not daring to take his eyes off the monsters that would reach him at any moment, Tybalt used his fingers to frantically probe the keep at his back, grasping for a door to get inside. His left hand found a depressed place in the stone edifice—and then touched wood.

  Tybalt darted to the left, grasped the handle of the door—and found it locked.

  Shit!

  He quickly drew his dagger and smashed the hilt against the door handle—once, twice, a third time, and the handle broke off in his hand! The door swung open.

  Then Tybalt heard the nearest super-skeleton right on his heels, so he darted inside the keep and slammed the door behind him.

  Still alive, he thought giddily, breaking out into a mad half-grin. Somehow. Still alive!

  The keep was dark inside, with only a small amount of light let in through a depressed part of the roof where the stone sagged inward slightly.

  Despite the dismal surroundings, the dimness, and the pressing threat outside, Tybalt breathed a quick sigh of relief. Whatever problems his new refuge had, he could not sense anything moving inside it. There was some old, broken-down furniture—a table that slumped slightly with one leg broken, a chair covered in cobwebs, and a busted coat rack. A dusty old glass tankard that Tybalt guessed had once served to hold ale was the only item on the table.

  But there was no life—or unlife. That was a gods-sent gift—or, wait, no, perhaps there was something living.

  Tybalt sensed some movement in the background of his vision. Just slight motion.

  Maybe not moving, but simply looming?

  He had to turn his head and squint to see what he was looking for, but after a moment, he spotted it.

  On the back wall of the keep, mounted on the stone, sat a slightly glowing object. It was not gleaming bright—as nothing in this place was. But it gave off a gentle source of light in the darkness. Perhaps it caught whatever light came in through the ceiling and magnified it.

  He could not tell the object’s identity without getting closer, and for the moment he did not want to take his back from the door. He knew that at any moment, something would come after him.

  There was a surprisingly long lull, however. Almost thirty seconds passed quietly, a silence that almost convinced him this place would be somehow inviolate. A sort of safe zone.

  But sure enough, as soon as he felt momentarily safe, there was a pounding on the door at his back.

  Thud! Thud! Thud!

  Three different fists slammed down on the wood at Tybalt’s back.

  All he could do was hold the door shut with his full body weight and silently pray.

  Vika, he prayed to the God of War, if you give me the strength to get through this, I promise I will stop cursing your name silently whenever the Commander says your prayers at mealtimes.

  The pounding continued, and he sensed his strength was not growing any firmer. Yet he had always hated Vika, and it was hard, under pressure, to come up with a better prayer to the War God. In desperation, he added a prayer to the Goddess of Love, though he knew she was not the right deity for the job.

  But Vika and Astara were the only deities his village honored. Perhaps the only ones the country honored. He knew there were other, minor gods, but their names were largely forgotten.

  Astara, if you, um, show me some love here, I promise to sleep with a dozen women in your honor as soon as I get back to a civilized area. It was often said that Astara favored men who were engaged in “the chase” of women. This was a deity for whom Tybalt had a little more regard.

  It might have been only an illusion or the sheer power of desperation—or the thought of returning to civilization and favoring a dozen new women with his touch—but Tybalt thought he felt a little more strength flood into his muscles.

  He shoved his body back against the door, and he held firm against a full minute of pounding on the other side.

  Then it stopped.

  Tybalt could not guess what was happening outside, but with the pounding at an end, he was certain the skeleton mage was preparing some fresh trick to gain entry to the keep—or perhaps planning to destroy the rickety building entirely. He quickly grabbed the unsteady table and the cobwebbed chair and shoved them up against the door, bracing them against each other and the floor as best he could to try and keep the door shut.

  The very second after he’d done so, the pounding started again.

  The table and chair shook with each blow, the cobwebs flying up with every hit the chair endured, but somehow, the barrier held up for the moment.

  Tybalt noticed he did not even need to use his own strength to hold the furniture in place.

  Whatever was pounding at the door now must be a weaker creature than the monstrosities that had been striking it before.

  For a moment, he wondered why something weaker would have replaced a stronger monster in trying to get at him.

  Then Tybalt shook his head. It did not matter right now. All it meant was that he had a temporary reprieve.

  I need to find a new weapon or some way out of here, he thought.

  His eyes immediately darted back to whatever object it was that had seemed to cast off some light in the dim room. As he looked harder at it, to get a closer look, he saw that whatever it was that hung from the wall, it was covered in cobwebs just like the chair.

  Tybalt quickly strode across the keep to the back wall.

  He sucked in a breath and blew, then used his bare hands to begin brushing more webbing off of the object—and cut his palm almost as soon as he touched it.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  He uttered a quiet curse—and then smiled.

  Now he could see it a bit, and he saw the object was made of gently glowing metal. Even though he could not see the edges, he knew it must be quite sharp since it had cut his hand on incidental contact. Despite having been left there long enough to be covered in cobwebs.

  He looked around for the handle as the pounding intensified behind him. Even if he died now, at least he would still go out fighting, with a weapon in his hands.

  He finally found the hilt and grasped it, and he felt a surge of power at the touch of the blade.

  With the power came a strange feeling of righteousness.

  I think I may have heard of this sort of thing, Tybalt thought. Glows in the dark, keeps its edge forever, made to infallibly destroy evil…

  His mind ran through old legends he only half believed in. There had been a surprising amount of truth in those, considering all the monsters he had fought in the Tower.

  His lips twitched into a small smile. His situation was looking up.

  He took a step toward the door, but his foot caught on something, and he almost stumbled.

  His eyes dropped to look at what he had seen—and the smile spread across his face.

  A plan had sprung to mind.

  —

  The lich growled impatiently.

  The monsters under his command were behaving very strangely now. Ordered to break down the keep’s door and bring the human out, whether in one piece or several, they instead took a surprisingly timid approach. One or two would go up to the keep’s door together, pound at it, and then quickly give up, only to be replaced by the next creature in line. No undead returned to striking the entryway after it had once made the attempt, but there were over a hundred of them, so this had continued for a couple of minutes before the lich started paying attention—and becoming annoyed.

  If I did not know better, I would swear these undead were afraid… but our kind do not know fear. Not of any mortal man, at any rate. Perhaps these specimens are defective somehow.

  He sent a simple, direct telepathic communication to his monsters.

  What is taking you so long? he asked.

  The sensations he got back—these undead were too primitive to send coherent thoughts—were of discomfort at offending their master rather than anything useful.

  “Very well,” the abomination snarled to himself. “I will do it, then.”

  He strode across the battlefield, the undead kneeling as he passed them, until he reached the tiny keep that had somehow wasted several minutes of his precious time.

  When you want something done right…

  He placed a long, bony finger on the wall of the building gently—like he was caressing a lover, though he had not felt the touch of any loved one for almost a millennium.

  But this touch was probing. The lich had always been a curious sort. Now it was one of the only passions he had left. The process of becoming undead, plus centuries of inactivity, had drained most of the others out of him.

  With his power, he tried to gauge the building’s strength—and to understand what had repelled his minions.

  The building’s structure felt unsteady under his tapping phalanx… but was there something else there? An energy of some sort?

  For a moment, he thought he had detected something familiar. Something very old and potent.

  He reached out and probed again and tried to identify it, but whatever it was seemed to have vanished—if it had ever been there.

  It was probably just a resurgent memory. There was no reason to expect that power to be present here, of all places. But then again… why is this fragment of a building here now at all?

  Despite the pounding of his minions, the keep still stood. There had to be some magic holding it up, not mere stone and mortar. If that was the case, perhaps there was more to this place than met the eye.

  Instinctively, the lich raised his nasal cavity to the air, as if he still had his old senses—as if he could still smell magic. He could not, of course, without a nose. Giving up the flesh had its downsides. Other than that precise power, he did not have easy methods of detecting whether a magical artifact was present somewhere—not unless it was right in front of him.

  After giving up his old, fleshy form, he had acquired servants specifically devoted to that task. But they were not here now.

  The lich shook his head.

  No matter.

  He might not have magic specifically suited to divining the mysteries of this keep, but he could simply unmake it.

  He gathered more of his aura around his phalanges, and he spoke a single word of power in a long-dead magical language.

  The word meant simply, “Decay.”

  Power radiated out from his fingers. Under his touch, the stone began to erode away as if a swift current was working it over—and doing so across a hundred thousand years.

  The lich’s bone face could make only two expressions now: open-mouthed and eerily grinning. But even if he could have twisted it into some other shape, he would be smiling right now.

  He loved that feeling of destruction, of breaking something down at the fundamental level.

  He had not needed to speak the word of power aloud. Thinking of it with focus was enough for the average mage, and for one as experienced as the lich, even thinking of the specific word was unnecessary. He could simply exert his power.

  But he hoped the human heard him and somehow understood. The man’s face had been so pitiful when he first heard the lich’s voice, and human fear was exquisitely sweet.

  Just one more look of fear in the man’s eyes would make it worthwhile being brought back after all this time as a shadow of his former self.

  As his power swept over the wall, the stone crumbled around him. The wooden door, which he had not bothered to touch with his power, tumbled out of the building as the frame crumbled.

  Well, go in and get him, then, the lich sent, turning away from the building without bothering to look inside.

  Whatever crap was in this keep was ultimately of little concern to him. Or, if there was a powerful magical artifact of some sort inside, perhaps it was best avoided. Either way, he would stay back for now.

  The horde of the undead swept past the lich, brushing close to their master in their eagerness to do his bidding.

  For the next several minutes, the lich simply stood back as the monsters explored the ruin.

  He watched with slowly mounting frustration.

  The incompetent fucks were still looking for the damned human!

  The lich could see from his vantage point twenty feet back that there were still some unimportant bits of furniture standing in the building, but the undead he had unleashed should have already found the pitiful human and ripped him limb from limb by now.

  If only I had been able to create my own undead here instead of having to rely on someone else’s leavings, he thought. These are definitely inferior specimens…

  Perhaps they had been deliberately made weak, to be appropriate as a challenge for a class-less human.

  If they had been his own creatures, he would have crafted them with enough intelligence to perform a basic search. In fact, a number of his skills were currently sealed, or he could have simply endowed them with intelligence despite their poor craftsmanship—or erased all life in the vicinity with a thought. That would not be an appropriate test for the human, though.

  The lich had to be weakened for this to be any sort of fight.

  Very well. I will do this part myself, too.

  At least he would have the opportunity to see the look in the human’s eyes as he died.