You do not want to hear the tale of how Alice fought her way into the Lich Caves.
Mostly because it would likely include her running commentary.
“For the love of Loki, a six-armed mutated gargoyle? I get that temporal stasis will help it live forever—gotta check the runes, actually, that’s an interesting innovation—but boy, that thing was unhappy. Three growls, two swipes, one attempt at biting, and then you cast one Orb of Unmaking and it steps right through like you just offered it a slice of Tiefling pie.”
“….wonderful. You detect the trap, you levitate over the trap, you land on the ground, and it turns out nobody’s maintained the ground so you fall INTO the trap. Some of those spikes could’ve hurt.”
“Treasure? TREASURE? Who’s stupid to pick up a bunch of heavy gold bars while they’re trying to maintain mobility in a dungeon?”
After many adventures which would no doubt brighten and terrify most peoples’ tales, though for Alice, most of them were simply frustrating, annoying, or (in the case of a few particularly well-designed pieces)—struck her fill across the chest with a mighty feeling of envy. At last, she stepped over the last Death Knight, figuring someone could re-animate it later, and entered the Tomb.
The seven Liches were seated around a table littered with bones. The Liches were also littered with bones; while one or two had patchy, grey flesh, most were largely skeletons in very old, very expensive robes, and one, Acerapt, was merely a skull.
Alice held out the precious artifact in both hands. It was, if anything, older than almost all the beings in this room, covered in gems, and worked a precious and powerful sorcery.
She had never been able to figure the damn thing out; it looked like a weird golden object covered with the letters of the alphabet in a strange order. Still, it was precious.
“I have brought you a gift, and come seeking knowledge,” she said, formally. “I am prepared for your tests.”
“Tests?” asked a lich who wore no robes, but whose skeleton had been painted an arresting shade of blood-red, spoiled only slightly by a number of splotches where she’d clearly spilled vodka on it. “You were hoping for TESTS?”
“I seek the wisdom of Dark Lords,” Alice said. Every book, every single one, said that these beings, each of whom was well over five hundred years old, were incredibly formal and stood upon their dignity.
Nobody had told them. Their table of bones and alcohol was a mess, they clearly neither cleaned nor permitted servants, and they’d clearly been drunk for quite some time.
Possibly Alice’s entire life, for all she knew.
“Jubliette”, she said. “You conquered the entire Known World five thousand years ago. You gave it all up to become the first truly immortal mage.”
The robeless Mage was snoring. This was disconcerting to anyone familiar with Necromancy. Sometimes the dead sleep; sometimes they wait dreaming; seldom do the dead, or even the Undead, snore.
Alice looked around. Perhaps three of the Liches appeared to be even vaguely conscious. The rest were dead drunk.
“Is this all you do?” she asked.
“Hah!” said the Lich in the broken crown. “And what would YOU do?”
“Research,” said Alice firmly.
“Into what? How to feel more things when immortal? No need. We spent a great deal of time and have figured out how to get drunk. What else do you need?”
Alice sighed.
“Look,” she said. “Each of you is an enormously powerful magic user who conquered the World in your own way. Elrin, you used an army of Dragons which were unstoppable; if they didn’t need to sleep so long between breath weapons, or if you’d just been more careful, you probably could have ruled forever.”
“True,” said Elrin, playing with his much-stained cape.
“And you, Jubliette!” Alice said sharply. The sleeping mage woke. “You called forth Demons, controlled them with an entire series of pacts and rules, and controlled essentially every civilization in the World.”
Jubliette smiled. “You know, Demon lovers don’t mind if you’re dead, as long as you’re active?”
Alice closed her eyes. “I’m going to try not to think about that.”
“Bombadale,” she said. “You did something similar to what I could do. You, too, had an army of Orcs. So many of them fought! So many of them killed! So many of them died! They still have a long weekend in your honor every year.”
“Quite true,” said the very sallow Lich.
“So,” she said, “I’m curious what made you stop. What point did you get to in your rule where you got tired of controlling everything? When did the ambition you sought stop being as interesting as eternal life? Why did’’t you simply try to keep the lives—er, unlives—you had, once you were in control?”
The three ancient sorcerers looked at each other with the kind of glazed eyes which takes centuries to master.
“You have a very romantic idea about ruling the world,” said Bombadale.”
III.
Alice was prepared for quite a lot of tests.
She was prepared for her consciousness to spend a week in psychic acid.
She was prepared for a magical duel—hoped for it, really. She seldom got a chance to cast spells on/with/towards other people who knew what they were doing.
What Alice should have prepared for, as happened so often, was disappointment.
“O.P.U.S.,” said Jubliette.
“I beg your pardon?” aske Alice.
“Other Persons Are Usually Stupid,” said Acerab. “It’s something we say a lot around here.”
He swiveled around to look at Alice. “Here’s our deal.
“Each of us sought power throughout our lives. Magical power was the most difficult, took the most time, was the most dangerous; acquiring normal mortal power in terms of wealth, armies, control and such…that had almost no risks at all of being devoured by invisible demons. It was easy, it was useful,it was comfortable, and it eventually became necessary, as most people tend to fear that which they do not understand.”
“Especially when it’s embodied in the form of tremendous magical power harnessed frequency through Necromancy, Demonology, or experiments in That Which Man Was Really Truly Not Meant To Know.”
“So each of us built an Empire so that we’d have more time to engage in magical pursuit and/or pleasure, depending on our natures.”
“And here’s what happened,” sneered the Lich in the broken crown.
“No matter how we tried to conquer the World, it needed ruling.
“Good rulers proved to be less interested in bending to our will. Bad rulers tended to make more trouble for us. Any combination thereof proved to be unbelievably annoying. Leadership is fractal; no matter how big or small the view you take, ultimately, you get better and more useful results with effective, intelligent, thoughtful control.”
Alice was treated the site of all three of the active corpses actually spitting. They didn’t have any spit, but the gesture was obvious.
“There’s no help for it.”
“Rule badly enough, they rebel.”
“Destroy their capacity to rebel, and you basically wreck their industrial capacity. It also becomes impossible to have even one genuinely cheerful person around you, except for the people who really enjoy causing others pain.”
“And even though that includes most of us, we STILL don’t like it.”
Alice paused, breathed, and counted from 37 to 5, slowly, backwards, odd numbers only.
“All right,” she said. “I get that you couldn’t make it work. I’m sure I’d love to learn more depressing things, but I came her for the Trial.”
“The Trial”, echoed Broken Crown.
“Yes, the Trial through which a sorcerer may pass in order to gain the wisdom and power necessary to rule while still retaining one’s magehood!”
“Oh, that,” said Acerab. “You’re in it.”
“What?” asked Alice. She began to be vaguely grateful that neither Sam nor Susane was there to see this.
“This is it,” said Broken Crown.
“We live in a magical Universe. A very, very powerful Sorcerer could assuredly rule. Might have no real choice, really.”
“And we’re here to tell you that it sucks,” said Jubliette.
“I actually started out with the intention of ruling. Magic was just a means to that end,” said Broken Crown.
“Only to find that Humans are stupid, inefficient, stupid, lazy, pig-headed, stupid, bad at following directions, stupid, and also, not very bright.”
“But that’s only if you get them alone.”
“In large groups, they’re idiotic beyond description.”
“So any system you set up is ultimately likely to fail. It doesn’t matter if they know they’ll be tortured to death by seven hundred tiny, steadily-increasing lightning strikes while staked naked against the Cliff Face of Storms until their heart gives out over the course of a week or so. They’ll hate it. And they’ll STILL fail to do what you want.”
Alice said, “Right, and about that trial…”
“THIS is the trial, idiot. And it’s not a test to see if you can take enough pain, mental strain, energy, and effort to survive some torture we devise.”
“It’s a test to see if you’re smart enough to get out NOW and become a Lich BEFORE you have to deal with ruling over millions of completely idiotic humanoids.”
Alice looked at them. The skulls were grinning, and the sallow corpse’s lips were upraised, but they weren’t smiling.
Alice knew a rictus when she saw one.
“So I can give up on the hassle now and become a Lich, or try to rule the World like everyone else, THEN give up and become a Lich?” she asked?
All the skulls nodded in unison, which was impressive for the ones not attached to necks.
“So,” said Jubliette. “Give up?”
“Yes,” said Alice. “Yes, I do.” She walked over to one of the stacks of bottles on the wall, chose a bottle of whiskey, pulled the cork with a practiced gesture, and chugged.
And chugged.
And chugged.
And fell down.
The Liches looked at her and shrugged and went back to passing Eternity.
Eventually, Alice woke up. She had the biggest hangover you can imagine. Without bothering to wave to the animate corpses, she gathered her things and lit the tiniest light she could attach to her finger. It still gave her a headache to look at. She began making her way out.
With any luck, the pain in her head would last until she got outside, and confuse her enough that she couldn’t easily find her way back.
Alice had gained Wisdom.
Also Whiskey.
Of the two, the former might be more practical in the long run. But the latter was what would help her make it home.
Assuming there was any point in going home.
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