The old crone sat with her back turned, cackling softly to herself over gods-knew-what and slowly stirring a cauldron full of mysterious meat and other foul-smelling things. Valda glared at her from behind the last patch of brush in the ravine, trying to determine if she was the lich the barbarian was looking for.
Valda's tan skin was decorated today with golden arabesques that let her blend in with the sandstone of the ravine during this ruthless dry season. The camouflage was more than a fashion statement- the barbarian was on a dangerous, if far-fetched, mission. Four townspeople had gone out to the rocky hills on the edge of the savanna and never returned. Two merchants whose regular trips were crucial to the local economy had never arrived. All signs pointed to the people disappearing in this area. The townspeople blamed an ancient legend, a lich of tremendous power. Normally Valda would have been skeptical, but their sincerity, the certainty of their beliefs had her believing them, so she took the job of ridding them of this menace.
She slowly crawled behind her quarry, stalking along like a cat on all fours until she was almost in striking distance. Finally she was right behind the old crone. She slowly, silently rose up on her feet.
Her blade touched the woman's throat. "Don't move a muscle, hag."
The old woman, all bones underneath a great black cloak, chuckled softly. "You really fell for it, didn't you?" she croaked.
Valda's skin crawled as the hag's laughter was joined by one voice after another. She stiffened up and looked around to find the top of the ravine-and the exits-covered by an entirely too large group of bandits. So much for the lich theory.
The thieves on the ground quickly encircled her. Valda thought of taking the crone-clearly the brains of the operation-hostage, but the hag held up a tiny crossbow towards the barbarian's bare navel. "Don't think about it," her voice cracked. "Just stand still. That's right, it'll all be over soon... at least after my boys have their fun with AAAGHH-!"
Valda had kicked over the boiling cauldron, scalding the bandit leader mid-sentence, the foul soup covering her head to toe. The barbarian dove aside as a crossbow bolt flew from behind and above the hag, barely saving enough time to raise her guard and block a vicious lunge by the closest bandit.
She struck back, landing an awesome blow that separated his neck, but before she could rejoice three more were on her. They weren't ready for the barbarian's skill, but then she wasn't ready for their numbers. A chaotic melee ensued, Valda using her physical talents to the utmost to dodge attacks from every direction and strike whenever she had the opportunity.
Moments later, Valda stood panting in a puddle of blood. The floor of the ravine was strewn with scattered bodies of her foes, but the barbarian was still trapped, the majority of the bandits still alive and grinning at each other as her obvious fatigue spurred their confidence. The barbarian scowled back at them, confident she could take down a few more, but slowly resigning herself to the fact that this time, there would be no escape.
Or so she thought.
Suddenly there was a flash of green fire all across the ravine, forcing the barbarian to cover her eyes as the heat singed her eyebrows and the air was filled with the sounds of her attackers screaming. Her hair whipped around wildly and she grit her teeth, bracing for the end. But death didn't come for her. She opened her eyes and found herself surrounded by charred bodies, some of them still covered in green flames.
The fires never burned out. Instead they began slithering off their victims and towards a point some twenty paces in front of her, turning into one small but bright pile, churning out black smoke. The barbarian looked on wild-eyed as the smoke began taking shape in three points, a head and wide, pointed shoulders, then falling down like a cape as the fire died and a figure the size of a tall man appeared in its place.
A foul looking husk stood in front of her, green dotted eyes and an elaborate but ratty cloak all that covered a nearly skeletonized body. The lich. Valda raised her sword as its mouth swung open like a door hanging off its hinges. The skin on her back crawled as she could see several foggy green shapes flow out from the bodies of the dead and into the lich's mouth, a sucking noise filling the air of the ravine and making even the bold amazon struggle to not cry out in fear.
The last of the fog went inside the lich's mouth, and the sucking noise stopped as its mouth swung shut. Valda tensed-but the lich held out its hand. The barbarian watched uneasily as the dried skin over the skeleton form started to turn from a rotten black to a smooth, pale white, the muscles and fat underneath the skin apparently regenerating as well. The skull and beady eyes began filling out into a gaunt, almost elvish face, pale lips growing out to cover its ivory teeth and gray, cobweb-like strands of hair turning light blonde. In a manner of seconds the lich actually became a lithe, pale skinned, and rather handsome man, albeit still intimidating in his menacing but ragged wardrobe.
"Lich Velan!" Valda sputtered.
The lich ignored her tone, reaching up to pull off his hood, his long hair blowing in the wind. "Yes. I take it these witless savages had been committing foul deeds and I was blamed? That's usually the case whenever lone adventurers start wandering these lands looking for a lich to slay."
Valda blinked back at him, confused.
"Well, there are your culprits. Either go back and tell them the truth or find my lair and face me, depending on if you value the gold they promised you, or your life. I don't kill for no reason, but your life can serve me as well as theirs has." As soon as he finished speaking, the lich disappeared into smoke once more, a cloud of it whisping further into the ravine and leaving Valda alone.
The barbarian was stunned, standing in the ravine, looking around at the charred remains of those that had assaulted her. Absent mindedly, she began walking in the direction of where the lich had been, her thoughts still swirling in her head. If he hadn't showed up when he had, she would probably be dead. Perhaps worse.
She felt gratitude, yes. Velan had saved her life, definitely, but liches were always evil, right? Valda knew next to nothing about what a lich was aside from the fact that they were undead and that they lived by stealing the lives of others. She'd had some of the horrible details of how they became liches described to her when it was pertinent, but she never really cared how something or someone had gotten the way it was, just the way it was now.
Still, he had saved her and that was what mattered. Who was she to judge him, anyway? One could say that she'd done much good in her life, but she'd almost always done it for a price, when she could, anyways. It ended up balancing out and if you looked at it like that, wasn't the lich a good guy for saving her and taking the lives of all these evil people?
Valda had made it to the edge of the ravine where the lich had appeared. Its black skin and that terrible noise it made stuck with her, but so did his soft, pale flesh and the fact that she was still alive. In the distance, she could just barely see wisps of Velan's smoke. If she hurried now, she could follow him. She sat off, her mind made.
Lucky for her, he didn't just teleport and he didn't seem to make it hard on her to follow him. Still, she had to run just about as fast as she could, which made it hard to be stealthy. Hard, but hopefully not impossible, she thought to herself as her legs began to feel the burn and she began breathing heavily from the long exercise.
The lich had led her to a cave in a series of sparsely forested hills. She began to slow, catching her breath, aware she was going to need to save her energy. Valda hoped that the cave wasn't just some sort of tunnel because if so, it was going to make her lose him. Valda could run for miles under normal circumstances, but that had been a long ways to sprint-it was good that they had finally made it to his lair.
Slowly, tentatively, she made her way into the cave. The inside was dark and it took a little while for her eyes to adjust, but soon she was cautiously picking her way through its narrow passages. Oddly, it went from natural cave to ruins once nearly all of the light from the entrance was gone. She was still moving carefully to keep her footing, but the ground went into an even path and led to walls that she could place her hands on. She began looking for some sort of torch and found one almost immediately.
Now she could see the ruins. They were made out of dark stone, almost reminiscent of the material drow used in their buildings, but the architecture was significantly different. On the outside, the bricks were smooth, but once Valda entered through an archway, she began to see letters, runes, inscribed here and there. She wondered what they were for, stepping carefully for fear of magical traps.
Finally, she came upon some sort of combination of a anteroom and a laboratory with tomes of lore in dusty old bookshelves and components, surely magical, scattered about large tables. In the center of the room was a stone throne. It looked somewhat different from the rest of the room, as if it had been brought here from another place. Everything was dusty and old and in the center of the room sat Velan, the lich.
He looked bored and quite clearly disappointed, "So, you choose to challenge me. Pity."