Yew, and the End of the Beginning [1/2]

The rest of the proceedings were very boring and involved too much paperwork. Yew decided that the guild-master could handle that part, and thanked him in advance. In return, he made her dismantle the barrier by herself. She pouted about it, but ultimately it was easier than paperwork, so she agreed. All she had to do was find the matrices and erase or break them. She already knew where they were from her impromptu scouting adventure earlier.

One by one, she knocked the metaphorical pillars over until only one was left. Just as she was about to do it she heard an outraged shriek in the distance. She also felt a sickly pulling on her soul.

“NooooooooooooOoOOOOOOOOO!!! No! What have you done!? My glorious army! My barrier!” The arch-lich flew at her, “STOP THIS INSTANT!” Yew looked the lich straight in its glowing eyes.

“You mean, this barrier?” She lifted a foot to gesture to it.

“Yes! That barrier. Of course that one, what other could I be talking about?” It sneered.

Yew gleaned, for that one moment, the innate insight of a cat. A desire for revenge, no matter how petty, welled up and she smashed her foot down onto the final matrix. The green barrier had been gradually weakening with each one she erased, until the full weight of the spell hinged on the final matrix. It was so unstable she didn’t need any magical energy. It was enough just to drag her foot through the shapes of the runes that could no longer maintain themselves in the soft dirt. The barrier exploded, it was beautiful; but the far more glorious sight was that of the lich clawing at its own head in frustration.

She was sure that must have taken it a long time to set up and here she had just stomped it out of existence. She smiled innocently up at the ancient undead mage. It was busy throwing a tantrum about she had ruined its plans, and how she was just a weak little half-ghoul and should have stayed out of its way. She considered it a moment and decided that she did not, in fact, regret getting in its way. In fact, it may be one of the best choices she has ever made.

Yew took the time it was distracted to prepare for combat. She hadn’t meant to confront it so soon. Yew stuffed a piece of beef jerky down her throat preemptively and readied her pendant chain. It was the best thing she had on hand to keep the lich from flying away, if she charged it with light magic it would burn her a little, but it would keep ahold of ghosts and adjacent incorporeal types. When she thought about it, a lich was really just an overrated ghost. Yew knew there was a reason she didn’t like those things other than their tendency to shock whatever is nearby.

She swung the chain out at it, but her time was up. It was moving on to the anger stage of grief after the tragic loss of its barrier and army. It also decided that she should be the target of that anger; which was fine, as long as it didn’t run away. It launched shadow laces at her, nearly slicing her side open; the momentum it generated fluttered her cloak. She glared up at it, bending her knees before darting to the left to run around it. All the while she continued to lash out with her chain, hoping to catch it at least once. It spun in a circle readily to follow her.

Yew let the end of her hook drop, digging into the ground as she went. She ran a full circle three times, drawing a massive spiral rune. She didn’t bother wasting magic on activating it yet, the lich was too aware of her movements. In her head, it was just one piece of a larger matrix she would draw in the area. After all, it didn’t actually matter how large or small they were drawn, only that they worked together compatibly. Yew could make one matrix as large as the ruins if she wanted, and the effect would be the same as if she had drawn it smaller. It was one of the best parts of runic magic, in her opinion.

It sent more spells at her, this time using earth magic to destabilize the ground beneath her. She used her hook to vault over the rough patches. It would have to do better than some uneven dirt to shake her.

“Stop!” it commanded, but she was ready this time. The jolt it sent through her didn’t stop her. She wouldn’t be held back by her past mistakes. It fired several spells off, weaker than comparable rune spells, but much faster to cast. She was fast enough to keep dodging around each blow that exploded or burnt the ground around her. She lashed her chain again, the lich moved away. It would be better if she could catch it, but as long as if moved closer to the ruins it was fine.

They continued their back and forth, sometimes taking glancing blows from one another, but neither getting hit hard enough to change the tide of battle. Their violent dance was far less elegant than the one she exchanged with the death knight. This felt more like trying to catch a leaf from a tornado than truly trading blows. However, Yew could be patient, she had waited many years for this already. She realized as she fought that she had always been waiting for this from the moment she had met the creature. They were always destined to end like this. Either Yew would die, or the lich would.

It was just as well that it had survived her sister’s assault; that wouldn’t have been a satisfying end to their ill fate. Yew wondered if it knew that the day it met Yew was the beginning of its end. Perhaps it would have killed her there, struck down before she had a chance to grow beyond its capacity to control her. It figures that it would fall to hubris, that was often a flaw of the ancients. Although, from its own perspective, maybe it would see this as the result of mercy rather than carelessness. It didn’t really matter; it would be purified and Yew would make it so.

She herded it into the shifting ruins, glad that they were freshly cleansed and she wouldn’t have to keep an eye out for any stray undead getting in her way. There among the moving walls and floors of the old mechanism she popped up from blind spots to smack the lich with her hook. The first time it had taken a full blow, not thinking anything could hit it, but rowan wood is special like that. Not even ghosts were safe from it. She used that free hit to smash it into a wall, just once, for Ulma.

They played cat and mouse within the ruins, having to dodge its magical attacks, as well as one another’s. Yew knew them better than the lich did, thus she had far fewer close calls. When they did land, she just to had eat to make whatever superficial injuries go away. She kicked up dust as she went, obscuring the lich’s view of the ground. Then Yew had a terribly ironic idea and snuck her way over to one of the barrier matrices she had dismantled.

It wasn’t too hard to modify. She added a couple runes here and there, as fas as she could, and set them off. The barrier flared back to life, smaller and seemingly without the previous doorway, except fo the one she intentionally left. Then she ran off to put the finishing touches on the larger matrix she had been pausing behind walls to draw out of sight. The lich wouldn’t notice until it was already to late for it to do anything. Yew grinned, slightly mad with the energy of it.

She was a hawk circling now, and the lich wouldn’t know it until she was already on it ripping out its nonexistent guts.

Yew ran out of the barrier, back toward her first spiral rune, pretending she had trapped the lich but was afraid of being stuck herself. The lich took the bait, chasing after her. It had already figured out the hole she left for it and stupidly not considered it beyond the escape it offered.

She subtly slowed her pace, allowing the lich to catch up with her just as they were overtop the spiral. Then she triggered it, running out of the vortex spell just as the lich ran into it and watched a magical supernova collapse around it. The bright swirls of magic ground at the undead creature, but the point of it was just to hold it in place long enough to write out the full rune sequence she needed to purify something of an arch-lich’s power level.

Absently she noticed one her more powerful blasts misfired, catapulting into the distance beyond the horizon. Must not have locked on to the target properly. As it sailed away out of sight she really hoped it wouldn’t hit anything important.

She tangled it up in chains made of light, over and over and over, until hundreds of chains were holding it to the ground. It screamed unintelligible sounds at her that she ignored as swiftly moved around; she used the tip of her staff to draw rune after rune, hundreds of neat little strokes that would be the lich’s undoing. It realized easily what she was doing this time, since she was not bothering to hide it at all. Soon it would all be over.

Then the lich started chanting, intense and dark energy consuming the area and even swallowing up a few of the light chains. She wasn’t sure what it was doing, at this point it was sort of a race to see who could finish first. Even so, she did not rush through her runes, making them sloppy would not serve her purposes. But chanting was faster than writing, it would seem, no matter how quick Yew could be at it.

The arch-lich cackled where he knelt.