The First Litch

Baribus hated the elves.

It was a personal conviction of his, and his views were not ones to be taken well by others, so he kept his thoughts to himself. Many of the students at the Mistwood’s Academy of the Mystical Arts were prone to gushing about ‘the virtue and wisdom’ of the elves, for allowing other races to peruse their wealth of knowledge. His views on the elves were in the vast minority.

His views had nothing to do with their race, and everything to do with their immortality.

He turned the page on the tome he’d borrowed from the library, his thoughts once again spiraling. As they had done extensively over the last few weeks. His search for answers had neared completion, he could feel it. Ambition and desire filled his breast, instincts buzzing in anticipation of the greatest magical breakthrough since the discovery of mana in mortal species some millenia ago.

The thought of which circles Baribus’ thoughts back to his previous musings. His hatred of the elves.

It had nothing to do with them as a species, as stated before. Really, if they had been just another mortal race, Baribus would not have cared either way about any Elf. He’d walk by them in the halls of the academy just the same as he did to any Dwarf or Impkin, enamored with his own studies and neutral towards their own.

The issue lies entirely in their immortality

Theirs was a race that had seen the First Dawn, The Sparking of the Stars. There were Elves alive to this day that had spoken with the Servants of the Creator as they planted the first mountains, had seen Father Sun and Mother Earth birth the Twin Moons.

And yet, for all the time they had lived. What did they have to show for it?

Elves passed the ages away, meditating in their Hometree Towers. Pondering the Songs of Voyaging Stars. Their achievements, both physical and magical, came far and few between, once or perhaps twice each millenia. You could count on one hand the great elvish philosophers, their great sorcerer’s contributions to the understanding of mana.

Magic had still been wild and untamed by the time the mortal races had earned their ability to shape mana four ages after the birthing of the races. Three ages after the elves had been taught their own connection.

So really, he didn’t hate the elves as much as he hated their… immortal nonchalance. Their lack of ambition. Their lack of progress.

All of which culminated into the reasoning for his bitter musings.

Three weeks ago, Baribus had dreamt up the greatest magical theory in the history of magical thought. A theory that could change the world in such a way never before seen and never to come again. A way to halt death’s greedy grasp permanently, and to free the mortal races from the bonds of mortality.

He expected recognition, acclaim, and… admittedly, praise.

He received none of those things from the board of Lunar Learning.

They were the only committee in the world of magical academia with the prestige and authority to grant him the resources to bring his theory to reality. To breathe life into his arcane calculations and theoretical lists of ingredients, and bear fruit with actual experimentation and precious sterile data. To bring his dreams into the palm of his hand.

And he’d been cast out. Ridiculed. His work was branded as ‘dangerously barbaric’.

Baribus’ hand slammed onto the page of the borrowed textbook, teeth gritting as his fingers scratched deep gauges into the pages and the paper crumpled within his tightening fist. His eyes glaring out the library window at the tower holding the Lunar Chamber. That duplicitous den of sloths! Unwilling to look out their windows to see change, and unable to think for even half of a moment to realize the world did not revolve around themselves.

Baribus' back heaved, his skin feverishly sweaty and stretched tight while his lip twitched incessantly in his sneer. Worst of all, his notes and calculations had all been confiscated, likely to be destroyed or hidden for the moment, likely until his own death, for one of them to ‘miraculously discover’ his own theories. Why should they get the glory? The notoriety? Who were they, to control and extort the whims of progress?

Barabas froze at the last question, sneer melting away as his face slackened at his epiphany. That question was important… Who did they think they were…? What right did they hold to say what the bounds of magic were? They could not stop him from continuing on his own. While they had his notes, they did not have his brain, nor did his notes contain the entirety of his theories and calculations.

He could… no, He WOULD take his breakthrough back into his own MORTAL hands. It would be he, BARIBUS, that would usher in a new age. It would be BARIBUS to defeat death!

Baribus stood, his hands planted onto the aged wood of the study table. His eyes burning with terrible fervor and his lips no longer stretched into a sneer, but a grin so large it seemed almost skeletal.

Baribus left.

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Abelthir’s swift and graceful feet carried him through the canopy of the forest as he chased the scouting party. The trees were an unnatural and ashy grey, the leaves dead or dying, as if choked, corrupted.

“Are you certain that you have found a trail?” he called ahead, turning away from the desecration of Gaia.

“We are certain, Headmaster. Multiple student’s belongings were found scattered through this section of the forest, and…. a few remains. We are certain that whoever’s behind this, is still here.”

Abelthir’s fair face twisted into a grimace, his long hair whipping in the breeze as his pace quickened. Months of disappearances and a lack of answers had been plaguing the school, fear spreading and pooling throughout the school. As the Headmaster, his shoulders bore the brunt of the weight. It did not help that the Board of Lunar Learning had been hounding him for answers lately.

He was looking for answers himself, if only so he could reassure his students that the Academy was safe, to allow them to continue on their paths of enlightenment.

Part of him knew he was irresponsible for the forty disappearances. Forty students that had trusted him and his institution with their safety and their future. Forty students, he personally, had failed.

Abelthir was not used to failing. He did not like it. He had been the first to step foot into the fiery gates of Hel during the Rebellion of the Dragons. It was his hands that had slain the Dragon King and brought justice to the slain Dryiads at Felemoore.

How could he have failed so badly? This was no war, this was a School. In what world was it right?

He shook his head and continued moving through this…. Dying forest. The scouts guiding him to the distant hills which were blackening unnaturally. There was a cave that… had not been opened before, it’s entrance blasted open by some powerful spell.

“Remember, headmaster. We are here to scout only, please stay behind…” the head scout began.

“Behind you and not give my position away, I know. You have repeated this twelve times, Pelinor.” Abelthir smiled good naturedly, before following the muttering elf into the cave.

His eyes roved over the stones inside the cave, taking note of the signs of melting and cooling. Someone had carved this cave with a powerful spell. It bore signs of the spells the Dwarves had invented some ages ago to bore through the rock of their mountain homes, though the cracks and holes showed the job had been done sloppily and hurriedly. Likely a temporary base then.

The darkness of the cave swallowed them, bearing down on the group’s shoulders in an invisible weight as they traveled further and further inside. Soon, the blackness began to disappear, replaced by a sickly green light sourced from further ahead. Another note of some sort of spell, as no natural light bore that shade of green light. As the master spellcaster, Abelthir stepped ahead of the group as they fell behind, and he raised his hands to gesture a defense matrix to life.

The hall opened up suddenly to a large square room, filled to the brim with unnatural green light. Many stone tables were spread throughout the room randomly, and each table bore an assortment of tools and… bodies covered with sheets. Abelthir resisted the urge to wince as he realized he had found his missing students.

All forty one of them.

His eyes narrowed and an angry grimace split his face as he stepped forward, rage filling his breast and, perhaps stupidly, making him react.

“What have you done, Baribus?!”

At the far end of the room, the figure of his long missing student froze, and with an unnatural calmness turned around. The young Man’s body straightened from his hunching over the table he had been working on, tools discarded as he wiped his grimy hands. He stood tall, almost proud.

“Headmaster Abelthir. You’re unexpected.” The young Man’s voice echoed in the stone room. “I had been hoping for some more time.”

Abelthir scowled, teeth gritting. “More time?! For cutting up your peers and desecrating their bodies?! You have gone too far!”

The headmaster heard more than saw the scouts moving on either side of him, likely surprised by his reckless movement forward but improvising to contain the threat. The headmaster gestured to his side, motioning them to contain the criminal. “You will be coming with me to answer for what you have done.”

An unnatural rattling growl echoed from the opposite side of the room, originating from the young Man. The headmaster paused, looking closer at Baribus as the young man cocked his head.

The light spilled across the Man’s face. The shadows of the hood had covered his features, but with the new angle, the headmaster could see the Man’s face. It was almost skeletal, skin pulled tight across his bones, the flesh underneath seeming to have melted away, like in victims of extended starvation. Except, his eyes glowed red from within, some sort of black mist escaping his nostrils as he breathed.

“No headmaster.” Baribus’ voice rattled. “I have not gone far enough!”

The man’s arm flew up, and Abelthir reacted, throwing his own out. A glimmering blue shield sealed off his side of the room just in time to block the black firestorm from incinerating him and his companions. He grimaced at the titanic force the spell hit his defense with, turning with a sweating brow to his companions. “Go! Warn the others!”

One of the scouts turned and ran out of the cavern, while the three others stepped forward with their bows drawn and determined expressions. “You will not fight this foe alone, Headmaster!” Pelinor shouted.

Abelthir grimaced, unable to insist otherwise as the firestorm abruptly ended. It was only millenia of experience that had him react in time to switch out his defense magic, tilting the new spell at a forty degree angle to deflect the powerful laser spell up and through the ceiling rather than break his spell. The dust of the incinerated rock rained down into the room, spilling light from the midday sun that pushed the unnatural darkness into the corners of the room.

“YOU WILL NOT STOP ME HEADMASTER!” the rattling voice of his former student bellowed from all around them.

Abelthir nodded to Pelinor. “Whatever it takes, bring him down!”

The scouts nodded, already spreading out to pepper the other side with arrows and novice magic as Abelthir focused on defence. Their swift and powerful attacks staggered the Man, forcing him back and into a corner. Each attack that shattered the man’s defensive spells brought out a fiercer and angrier snarl from him, until he was a bucking and snarling mess.

“Stop this madness, Baribus! Surrender yourself!” “Abelthir shouted, his magic boxing the MAn into a corner. The scouts stood next to him on either side, further cornering the man in.

For a terrible moment, silence echoed through the stone room, interrupted only from rocks falling in from the new hole in the roof.

It started low, and quiet, almost mistakable as coughing. It grew and grew in fervor and pitch, and the unmistakable sound of cruel and haunting laughter spilled forth from Baribus.

“You think you’ve won, Headmaster? This is just the beginning!”

From directly next to him, Abelthir saw Pelinor roll his eyes. But his millenia of experience only formed a cold pit in Abelthir’s stomach, and he moved his hands at the ready, his defensive ward pushing his former student tighter against the wall in an effort to contain him.

He’d misunderstood his student’s intentions, however, because it was not an offensive spell Baribus utilized.

Baribus’ skeletal hand dug into the stone of the wall, and sickly green light spilled down to the floor, before shooting across like lightning across the floor, breaking the stone as it shot to each of the tables holding his deceased student’s bodies. The bodies lit up with green light, before it died down slowly until the only light once again came from the sun spilling in from the giant hole in the center of the room.

“that‘s it? What’s a little green lights gonna do…?” Pelinor’s mocking was cut off with a grunt as he was tackled from behind by one of the previously prone corpses.

Startled exclamations spilled out passed the Elves lips as the rest of the corpses began standing from their tables while Pelinor began screaming in anguish as he was ripped into by the corpse of a female student of Abelthir’s.

The Headmaster grimaced, moving one of his hands from containing his deranged student against the wall to protecting his comrades. Only to gasp in pain as his wards containing Baribus shattered.

The Man moved unnaturally quickly, boney hands digging into Abelthir’s neck. Abelthir clawed at his student’s boney hands for breath, forced to watch as the other elves were overwhelmed by the undead.

The corpses trundled over to Baribus and Abelthir, their cold hands digging into the flesh of the elvish headmaster’s arms to restrain him while Baribus began walking to the table containing his instruments and notes. “You do not understand, Headmaster! I am on the eve of the greatest breakthrough of all time!”

Abelthir grunted, struggling to free himself despite the pain it caused him.* “You are defiling the natural order of life! Perverting the sanctity of Mana!”

“Is it so bad that I wish to defeat death?! To end the suffering of all mortal species mourning their loved ones before being stolen away in turn?” Baribus growled, slamming his tools against the stone table.

Abelthir grunted as the corpses reacted to their master’s anger, digging into his flesh further. “You are interfering with forces you do not understand! Look what you have done to your peers. Look at what you have done to yourself! This ISN’T the way!”

Baribus slammed his instruments against the floor in his anger. “You are just SELFISH! You and ALL the ELVES! You do not have to fear the cold hand of death! And what do you do with your time? NOTHING!”

Abelthir grunted in pain again as his flesh tore from the claws of the undead holding him. He tried one last time to reason with his former student. “You cannot recreate the gift given to us elves by the creator! It is not within the power of any of us, elf or not!”

Baribus seemed to freeze at this, before turning to the Headmaster, a sick gleam in his eye. “But i can take it… can’t I?”

Abelthir froze as the grin on his former student seemed to grow. “Yes.. yes it should be possible.” Baribus began energetically flipping through his tomes and notes. “I just need to adjust this healing spell, the transfer of Mana… of course, MANA! Why didn’t I think of it…” The MAn began frantically writing in his pages as his voice became feverish.

Abelthir began to fight like mad, a sick feeling forming in his stomach. “That is not yours to take! You are talking of Dark Magic! There is no coming back from that path!”

Baribus turned around, his red eyes shining like a furnace of ambition. “I will no longer be held back by Paltry Elvish sensibilities! You do not deserve such a gift! You do nothing with it!” THe Man walked over to Abelthir, boney hand outstretching as it glowed with sickly green mana. “Now hold still, this might not be very stable.”

Anger and pettiness filled Abelthir’s breast, his fair face twisting into a sneer. “If you wish for my everlasting years then have them, But you will NOT have Immortal LIFE!”

Abelthir ignored Baribus panicked screeching as he manipulated his mana into a powerful curse. As his body crumbled into dust, he took satisfaction in Baribus’ panicked and pained screams.

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The Litch King knew not how many eons he had been trapped here... In the dark.

Unable to enter the light of day, lest his bones begin to turn to ash.

Unable to interact with the turning of history, save for his undead servants in the odd corrupted graveyard.

He would have no ability, nor the inclination, to share his wealth of knowledge in the arcane arts, and no ability to influence it’s progress.

He was stuck here, in this tomb. Forever meditating and theorizing about magic. Passing the eons away, unable to die and unable to live.

A slave to his own immortality.