Cat Core 3, Prelude.

We're back with Florence Valentine and her cats as we start the final book in the series.


Prelude.

Berikoz exited the cat dungeon, satisfied he had dealt with any immediate threats to his person. Just outside the dungeon entrance, a party of pathetic adventurers waited, their eyes wide with terror as they gazed at the lich in all his splendor. Naturally, an aura of terror emitted from his being, but Berikoz often forgot about it since it rarely affected the powerful foes that dared to face him or the other undead in his control. The moment was a pleasant reminder of simpler days when it was still a fresh thrill to see common folk cowering in fear.

“What kind of skeleton is that, back to town everyone, let them know the dungeon is spitting out monsters!” One of the adventurers, a young woman with a bow said, trying to nock an arrow even as she backed away.

“A skeleton, how insulting. And to think I was going to let you live since your terror was so pleasant,” Berikoz said as he summoned a disease cloud around him, the edges of which enveloped the party.

The adventurers tried to run, hacking, and coughing as they inhaled the toxic air. Even if they had held their breath, it wouldn’t have helped them. Berikoz was a being of great power and the cloud he created needed only a small patch of exposed skin to do its work. He watched the party take a few steps before collapsing to the ground, even the strongest of them, a muscle-bound barbarian of some sort, only made it a few feet further than the rest. His victims decayed at a rapid rate, even their gear corroded as the cloud ate into everything that wasn’t protected by powerful magics. With a single wave of his hand, the five adventurers stumbled back to their feet, transformed into undead that obeyed his every whim.

His disease cloud aura, while powerful enough to slay most foes, only created the simplest of undead, which meant they were of little use to him. Mindless zombies were not the types of foes that would challenge his enemies in the least, so he ordered the newly risen dead to go on a rampage, attacking everything they could find. He had other places to be but didn’t mind leaving this present behind for the fools in the nearby town. As Berikoz began chanting the words to a teleportation spell, his zombies staggered into the dungeon entrance, an odd choice given the town full of people nearby. It wasn’t his concern; they would eventually find something to torment in his absence. The undead never stopped, they would seek out victims until they were finally destroyed. A flash of light enveloped the lich as the teleportation spell activated.

When the spell completed, Berikoz found himself in another of his holdfasts, this one was an underground complex that was situated beneath an old, abandoned fishing village. Instead of the quiet and darkness he expected, the lich found himself in the middle of a battle. The guardians he had tasked with defending this location were being cut down by a party of adventurers. These weren’t some green fools, fresh out of training, these were well equipped and skillful opponents.

Most of his defenders were already destroyed and only the most powerful that guarded his inner sanctum remained in the fight. This was an older location that he seldom used, but that didn’t mean that Berikoz had left it poorly defended. Here in the sanctum, the adventurers faced a pair of undead golems, crafted from the bodies of a pirate crew that had once inhabited the place. Unlike simple undead, these were created not only with necromancy but also with the magic of a golem crafter. The party seemed to not pick up on that fact and a priest among their number kept up a repel undead aura and tried repeatedly to use the divine abilities that allowed him to smite the undead. Instead of the golems going down in a fiery blaze of holy might, his guardians only took minimal damage.

“Fools, what makes you think you could violate my home and defeat me?” The lich mocked as he summoned fresh layers of protective magic around him.

“It’s the lich, fall back, we cannot stand against him!” The priest shouted.

“Then why enter the lair of a lich if you are too weak to face him?” Berikoz taunted.

“We weren’t here to destroy you, only your phylactery,” a warrior in heavy plate armor replied while hacking the arm off one of his golems.

“So, which of my many foes hired you, was it the king, mourning over his daughter? Slakash the Returned? Perhaps the adventurer’s guild has gone into action sooner than I had planned?” Berikoz asked while firing off magic missiles at a rogue who was hiding in the corner. When would they learn that you cannot hide in the shadows from the undead? A mage, lurking in the back of the adventuring party began to chant a spell. Berikoz recognized it as teleportation magic.

“His majesty, the king of Fintok, has given us this task, and we are not alone,” the warrior replied, dodging a blow from the slow but powerful golem. The warrior rolled past Berikoz’ minion, charging toward a row of shelves that were overflowing with various things that the lich had collected over the years.

“Oh, so you have discerned the location of my phylactery, not that it will do you any good. Should you destroy this one, I have hundreds of others,” Berikoz boasted.

His boast had once been true, but now, he could sense that it wasn’t quite so accurate. The continuous attacks on his person had caused a strain on his resources of late. It took time and powerful magics to create a phylactery and most liches could only have one at a time out in the world. Berikoz was powerful and could create a near limitless supply using an old technique he had discovered in a tomb hidden away in the Desert of Corruption.

The magic he discovered allowed him to create multiple phylacteries, but it also left him vulnerable to a point. Unlike the normal process, the phylacteries created by this lost knowledge captured a small portion of his essence during its creation, binding his undead mind to the mortal world. As each phylactery was destroyed, he lost a small fraction of his power. It wasn’t much, but after the relentless assaults by the hirelings of this king of Fintok, Berikoz was starting to feel it. Reaching out, he could sense that many of his enclaves were currently under assault, his minions dying, and his phylacteries being hunted down and destroyed by the score.

Centuries of work were lost, and whether the assaults were financed by the king of Fintok wishing vengeance for his daughter’s death, his rival Slakash, or some other aggrieved party, it didn’t matter. What did matter was that more and more power was being stripped from him by the minute. Should the trend continue, and it appeared there was no end in sight, he would become something that he hadn’t been in nearly a millennia; he would become vulnerable.

Despite being hidden by various spells, the warrior in front of him seemed to know exactly where the phylactery was hidden, his magic-enhanced sword hacking down upon a non-descript old sack. With a sound like that of breaking glass, Berikoz lost the phylactery. This would not do; it was time to take more drastic action. Death rays were cast, one after the other, overwhelming the party of mid-tier adventurers before they could escape. When quiet once again descended upon the room, the lich contemplated his options. A great risk needed to be taken, or he would be unlikely to survive the continuous assault.

Mana flowed from the lich, spreading his consciousness among the remaining phylacteries. The spell took some time and while he wove it, more of his phylacteries were destroyed. He could see invaders in many of his hidden locations, parties of powerful adventurers all seeking to cut the source of his power. Somehow, his foes had been able to breach the veil and locate his phylacteries. None of the living mages of Aerkon should have to power to do this, was there one out there more powerful than he had thought?

The spell he now wove was something new, a hastily crafted thing to counter the actions of the myriad of opponents he found himself facing. The magic Berikoz sent out began to recall his phylacteries, pulling them into the small core gem he had prepared earlier. Many didn’t survive the journey, the delicate structures they were composed of crumbled under the strain the spell put upon them. In the end, only a dozen survived, and a dozen was not even a fraction of what was required for him to maintain his current power. Level after level sloughed off his form, Berikoz would have to work quickly.

Another teleportation spell was cast, this one bringing him directly to the core he had prepared not that long ago. The core once known as Aaron Lavelle screamed at the pain of the remaining phylacteries being absorbed. Unlike the other cores he had tried this with, this one managed to remain viable, even after Berikoz followed his phylacteries into the gem. Settling his being into this small space, Berikoz took stock of his options. He should be completely hidden from scrying magic. Any mage or seer looking for his particular mana signature would find it lost among the mana of the dungeon around him.

It would take time to rebuild his power, but he could do that now, safely ensconced in the gem. In a few hundred years, those pursuing him would have passed on, and it would be safe for him to walk the world once more. There was always the danger that a party or beast of some sort would come along and clear the dungeon, opting to destroy the core he was hidden in. While such an action would undoubtedly destroy the core, he would survive well enough, and whatever had destroyed the core would face a newly awakened lich, and even with most of his power stripped from him, a lich was a deadly foe for anyone that would waste their time in an out of the way low tier dungeon like this one.

“What are you doing?” Aaron asked. Berikoz ignored his pleas for the moment, working to salvage what he could from the disaster. While he was diminished, he still had minions out here, minions that were bound to do his bidding. Giving them orders left him exhausted, a series of simple communication spells almost proved too much for the lich.

“I can, well, kind of feel you in my gem, it hurts so bad, what’s going on?” Aaron pleaded.

“Silence, I’m securing your future,” Berikoz ordered. He needed the dungeon to grow in power, as it leveled up, he would absorb a portion of its power and thus, over time, restore himself. His surviving minions, those he could reach in the limited time available to him, would see to it that fresh victims were brought to this dungeon, victims to feed them both.