A Matter of Life and Death

"No, what I must explain to you is my rather precarious situation. As I said, I study the dead. Not just as specimens, either. Bones tell stories, Fred- I raise the long-dead and bind their tales within ledgers." He indicated a stack of books, presumably the lich's works, that were piled in an alcove. Further down the corridor, eyes having adjusted to the flickering half-light, Fred could see walls of shelves lined with volumes upon volumes. How old was this guy anyway?

"I've heard that one needs blood sacrifice to perform such rites," he comments, straining slightly.

"These are the Southern Caverns," retorts Belboz, "domain of monsters, retreat of cutthroats, home to a thousand pitfalls and traps both natural, manmade and otherwise. These are the bones of travelers slain in their sleep, by a misstep, wrong breath or standing in the wrong spot at the wrong time. Each is baptised in blood, consecrated in crimson, on one addlepated quest or another. They sought gold or glory, and died for their efforts... Sounds sacrifice enough to me," finished Belboz humbly.

Fred could think of no response to this, and turned to Astra. She shrugged, so he settled for allowing Splitgrave to complete his long-winded explanation. "Thank you. Now, in my own quest for knowledge, I left no stone unturned! I delved deep to garner these insights, burrowed so long ago..."

"You robbed graves?" asked Fred, who was surprisingly quick on the uptake at times.

"In so many words. But," here a skeletal finger suddenly jutted skywards, "these caverns are vast, and I could not have hoped to exhaust their resources over the span of a single lifetime. My course became obvious to me, as I reached the apex of my mortality before that final, sheer descent. I did the only plausible thing."

"Which was?"

"I died."

This came as rather an anticlimax to Fred. You're a sorcerer getting on in years, your greatest work yet unfinished, what happens next? You drop dead. Exci-i-iting. "And then?" Fred prompts, since the man in front of him was clearly not dead... Perhaps not so clearly, but he wasn't not alive. Undead, he knew, was the term for it.

"Death..." Splitgrave muses. "Fascinating experience. Everyone should try it, at least once in my opinion. In any case, before I died, I placed my living spirit into a crystal orb, and stored it in a vault underground, for safekeeping. As long as it remained intact, I could sustain my consciousness, if not," he spread his decaying arms, his ribs visible through his dusty old robe, "my body.

"Now, however, I think that the time has come to end it. In exchange for helping me retrieve my life, or death, as the case may be, I will aid you in slaying the dragon and freeing your djinn from her bonds...

"So," said the lich, "have we got a deal?"

1. "There seems to be no alternative," says Fred glumly.
2. Fred draws his sword. "I could end it for you now..."

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