The First Lich Lord
Chapter 47

“Do you think that’s the last one?” I asked Damien from the bow of the battleship.

“I think so.” Damien gave me a worried look. “Are you doing okay? I know you’ve had a lot of things slamming into you all at once.”

“I’m coping.”

Damien and I had been hunting wandering emotions for the last day, while Ilore focused on repairing the ones we had. Periodically I would get pulses of different emotions as they were repaired and absorbed back into my mind. It had been a trying time. In some ways, having it happen all at once made it easier. I was no longer overwhelmed by one emotion and some countered each other which helped even things out.

Don’t be fooled, the bombardment was frustrating, and I took to working out my frustrations on any wandering emotion we came across.

We had gotten very good at catching them. Damien utilized the increased power of my mindscape to devastating effect. With my limited understanding of time magic, I was able to fill the role of Ilore for suppressing them until we could get them back to her.

On top of that, Damien’s living dead dragon continued to grow in power. One of the first things he’d done was enhance the dragon with the available increased mental energies. The dragon was truly a force of nature.

The massive beast plummeted to the island below us surrounded in a torrent of flame as it landed on top of the hulking emotion.

Things started happening quickly after mastering the orb. From hunting emotions to Ilore repairing them, it’d become easier. And both mine and my assistant’s power had increased greatly in the mindscape.

“Shall we head down?” I asked. Our presence was required. Mine was, at least, in order to replace the emotion and transport it back to the central island.

“Might as well.” Damien leapt off the battleship, and I followed him down. We arrived just as the dragon was pinning the emotion under its massive claws.

Using a spell Ilore had taught me, I bound the emotion in strands of time magic. Damien wandered around the area.

As I was finishing up, Damien came running over. “Zeke, this wasn’t the last one. I found a dungeon entrance.”

“Well, I guess it’s a good thing you looked around.”

Damien led me into a ravine. The dungeon was quite well hidden, and there were no monsters patrolling the entrance like the others. The passage was far too narrow for the dragon to enter, which was a shame. We’d sent it into a couple other dungeons ahead of us, and every time, the dragon had done most of the work. Like I said, it was incredibly powerful.

Damien and I entered the dungeon, with me leading the way with Mercy. Occasionally we had to shimmy sideways between rock faces in order to continue. The first sign of danger came as a sense I felt—something I’d taken to watching for in our fights. The precognition ability hadn’t been of much use while the dragon took the frontal charge, but this time, I was able to use this new sense to deflect a blow from a creature that leapt out from behind a corner.

The goblin snarled at me, and before it could recover, I struck it down. It being in my mindscape didn’t seem right.

“Why are there goblins in here?” I asked. So far, all the creatures we’d come across were monsters based off of natural creatures, not sapient creatures.

“I have no idea.” Damien eyed the corpse. “That is rather unusual.”

Damien raised the goblin corpse, turning it into a zombie. He directed the shambling creature to continue on in front of us. Though the goblin zombie would be of limited use, we figured it could take the brunt of any surprise attacks. Which turned out to be a good idea, as the next room contained a trap. The zombie promptly fell into a pit full of spikes.

I scratched my head in confusion. None of the dungeons had traps. It was weird they were showing up in this one. Unable to retrieve the body of the goblin, we moved on without it, and I used Mercy to probe the ground ahead.

The next tunnel narrowed even more, forcing Damien and I to crawl on our stomachs. We came into a large chamber, and the moment I stood, I threw myself to the side. Three bolts slammed into the stone behind me, having seen them coming in a flash of foresight. Damien swore and scrambled fast to get into a defensive position. On the other side of the room, three goblins with heavy crossbows were rapidly trying to reload.

I reshaped Mercy’s tip into that of a spear and threw it across the room like a javelin. My attack pierced through one of the goblins, and I rushed forward, balling a fist and slamming into the big nose of a second. As I ripped Mercy out of the dead goblin, a bolt of dark magic from Damien killed the third, and I quickly finished off the one I punched.

As Damien raised these freshly killed goblins into zombies, I shook my head. “There shouldn’t be goblins in here. I’ve never had goblins in my mindscape.”

“Do you have a particular hatred of goblins?” Damien asked. “Perhaps strong feelings about them in any way?”

“Not particularly… I mean, I think they’re vile, but other than that, no.”

“I guess we’ll replace out when we get to the boss.” Damien directed his new zombies to continue ahead.

The three undead goblin zombies didn’t last long. We lost two to a trap, and the third fell to more goblins. Those five goblins had been so focused on beating the zombie goblin to death, they hadn’t noticed us enter. They were caught completely by surprise by a spinning attack from me that killed three of them outright, and a pair of bolts from Damien that blew holes in the heads of the other two.

Some of the goblins Damien raised along the way survived, and by the time we made it to the boss, we had a small army of zombie goblins.

When we entered the final chamber, I understood what was going on. Well, I recognized the goblin. It was the chieftain of that goblin village I’d slaughtered.

“Why are you here?” I didn’t even know goblins had Mindscapes.

The goblin looked up at me in horror. “Monster! You, you, you!” it stuttered, unable to get the words out.

“Why are you here?” I asked with more force, lacing vehemence behind my words.

Damien directed the zombie goblins to move in threateningly, though they did not seem to faze the goblin boss.

“You attack—” It paused and shook its head. “You attack. I attack. I make a mistake.”

“I think I get it,” Damien said. “This goblin had some mental abilities and attacked you when you attacked his village. Evidently, Altor’s barrier wasn’t completely impervious. He passed right through it.”

“And in the process, it shattered his mind…” I sighed.

“Here, is not right,” the goblin said, getting a handle on the ability to speak. “But not why you monster.”

I smiled coldly. “You know, recently, I came to terms with the monster I am. So far it has been enlightening.”

I surged forward, holding Mercy in a high guard position, and Damien directed the zombies to attack. The goblin boss twisted his arms around, and a wave of cutting energy rocketed out, slicing the zombies apart. I deflected it with Mercy’s blade, and Damien raised a barrier around himself.

This goblin was quite the powerful telepath.

“Murderer!” the goblin screamed and lunged at me.

“If you weren’t goblins, I might feel bad,” I said. “But you were sacrificing villagers. Who’s really the monster here?”

I slashed, driving the goblin back, then spun Mercy and slammed the butt of it into his chest. A beam of black energy from Damien cut across the room, but the goblin dodged out of the way. To me, he was moving in slow motion, and I met him right as he came out of his roll.

The power from mastering the orb was quite immense.

I saw the goblin strike at me, using a cutting force that erupted out of his hand, and before he could bring that attack into the present, I deflected his hands to the side, and the cutting force shot off away from me. I blocked each of his attacks with the shaft of my weapon, then rammed the butt into his chest, causing him to stagger.

A bolt of magic from Damien knocked the goblin onto his back. Before it could rise, I was on top of it, though I didn’t strike right away. What he’d said bothered me. But this was an invader to my mind, and I would show it no mercy.

Blinking away the hesitation, I drove Mercy’s blade through the roof of the goblin’s mouth, securing its brain.

As the goblin’s head slid off my blade, I looked at Damien. “I am not a monster.”

“Aren’t we all monsters to our enemies?” Damien asked. “They see us as the ones who come to end their lives. We are always a monster to someone.”

“Huh… I honestly hadn’t thought of it that way,” I admitted. “Then, who determines what a monster is?”

“I guess that the depends on where you fall in the spectrum of light and dark,” Damien suggested. “I personally see Father Mathis as a monster. He abuses his power and the people under him. Yes, it’s not as bad as what this goblin was doing to the innocent, but it’s still a monstrous act.”

“Ilore saw me as a monster to start with,” I pointed out. “I really struggle with this concept. In the world I came from, there was a pretty clear right and wrong. Here in the World of Magic, the lines between what is right and what is wrong are more blurred.”

Damien gave me a long, searching look and nodded. “Good.”

“What do you mean good?” I asked.

Damien ignored me and gestured for us to leave. I kept pestering him about it, but he stubbornly refused to explain what he meant. We headed back to the main island with the captured emotion.

“This is the last one,” Ilore confirmed as we laid the emotion down on a bed. “I can tell. Your mind is finally feeling whole again. There’s just one piece missing,” she nodded at the restrained emotion. “And this is it.”