In the direct center of the Crystal Ring Academy, there was a stone platform.

  The dungeon seal, as it was referred to, was a monument to Baphelus’s continued subjugation of Vitrium, the Crystal Ring of the Ringed City. It was the heart of the city, both in terms of geographic location as well as strategic import. In legend, Baphelus had placed the seal on the dungeon to contain its energies.

  Before it was claimed by humans, the Ringed City continuously produced a legion of automata and other monsters, the likes of which were still being fought on the frontlines of the eternal battle that persisted in the depths of the school. Only Baphelus could truly know how much power and mayhem his seal kept away from the Ringed City. The nobility below comfortably nestled into the hollowed-out remains of the mechanisms built by the spirits, ignorant of the blood that had been spilled to earn them their fragile peace.

  Gio stared over the edge of that seal. Like the spokes of a wheel, it had been driven into the crystalline walls by ten equidistant metal stakes, but at the edges of the massive room, one could still peer into the endless darkness below, where the light of the moon no longer touched.

  “Down… there?” Gio hesitantly asked.

  Headmaster Vespertine had excused herself for the evening, so it was just Gio and his mentor.

  “Yes.” Baphelus replied.

  “H-how far down is it?” Gio asked.

  The lich laughed. “What, did you think I would let you fall?”

  “Well… probably not.” Gio meekly scoffed.

  “Hmm. Indeed. Giorgio, I don’t want you to be afraid of this- you will be safe. I must, however, ask that you follow my lead and behave as I tell you to.” Baphelus said,

  Gio nodded.

  Without even needing to wave a hand, Baphelus summoned a disc of gilded metal.

  “Take off your shoes, and step on.”

  My shoes?

  Gio hesitantly did as he was asked. The lantern from the table flew over to Baphelus, and when he took it by the handle on top, it transformed. The simple lantern’s golden glow dimmed as a haunting teal color entered its flame. Baphelus’ skin faded away, not in a shower of gore or a blaze of fire, but as if smoke cleared out of a room after a candle had been snuffed.

  His mentor’s true form was revealed, a skeleton engraved with countless enchantments, each of which glowed with the teal of his lantern’s fire. Baphelus summoned a long staff with a curve atop, hanging his lantern from the ring.

  The skeletal figure of the lich turned to Gio, with two candle flames in his eyes.

  “I know that I do not often allow you to see me like this. I will speak plainly. Though I often wear flesh to humanize myself, the truth is that I am no longer a mortal man. Where we are going, I wear no disguises. I do not tread lightly there, even though it is the heart of my own domain.”

  Gio tried to maintain eye contact with his mentor. He was about to see something truly remarkable, wasn’t he?

  Gio nodded again. He tried to summon as much respect and composure as he could.

  Baphelus began lowering the disc. Gio watched as his mentor’s skeletal form floated down beside the platform.

  “The platform is for my benefit, isn’t it?” Gio asked.

  The lambent, pupil-less fires of the skull’s eyes were set on him.

  “I imagined that lowering into the unknown might be more comfortable with a sturdy place to put your feet,” Baphelus replied in an even voice.

  It was… difficult, talking to him like this. Baphelus’s human face, even if only a mask that he wore, was a comforting figure. Gio knew, of course, that the lich only showed him the emotions that he wanted to display… but still, without even the illusion of a human face, Gio was left to try and cling to the belief that this being had been a benevolent mentor to him.

  What am I even worried about? We’re in his domain. He’s a lich. He could have snuffed my soul out like a candle from the moment I set foot in the school if he were anything like the liches from stories.

  “I… trust you. I don’t need it.” Gio hesitantly said.

  Baphelus paused for a moment. “Very well.”

  The disc disappeared under Gio’s feet. He felt his stomach drop with a wave of instant nausea.

  How had he been feeling tired before this?

  But he did not fall. He felt no pressure on his body to indicate that he was being held, nor did he detect any forces acting upon him. He just descended further into the dark, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, lowered by Baphelus’s immaculate control over everything in his domain.

  Gio looked up at the steadily retreating underside of the dungeon seal. It glowed with the same signature of Baphelus’s magic, as the tangled web of the Manse flowed through the baffling inscriptions.

  How long would it be until he would be able to understand even a modest portion of the enchantments at play there?

  “Do you know why they call me the Lamplighter?” Baphelus asked, interrupting Gio’s reverie.

  “No.” Gio answered honestly. “I always imagined that it had something to do with your symbol, the lantern.”

  “It does,” Baphelus replied. “But it isn’t quite correct to say that the lantern is my symbol. I took the lantern from old lore… to symbolize the lights said to guide the spirits of the dead to a peaceful end.”

  The crystalline walls of the school abruptly vanished, as they dropped into an inky void.

  “You saw some of my family history, so perhaps you have more context than most to understand me when I say that my upbringing was not an enviable one,” Baphelus explained. “I was a sickly child, and I later came to find out that my father was the main reason for my illness. Due to his tampering with my mother’s womb, I was born with an incredibly high disposition to death magic- so much so that I could always see the dead… at the cost of my wellness. This led me to some disagreements with the theocracy of the Kingdom of Red Flowers in my adolescence. Are you familiar with the tale, at all?”

  “I’ve heard some of the legends. Your country’s god… the King of Red Flowers… he died, right? And you battled… the leader of your country’s religion?” Gio replied.

  “Indeed,” Baphelus confirmed. “The King of Red Flowers was a God of death. He was a kind and merciful deity who embodied repose, and the cycle of death and rebirth. Though I have no love for the organization that sprang from his faith, I can now look back and say with conviction that I do not believe his teachings were ever immoral. The problem, as usual, lies with the people.”

  Gio could no longer see the light above.

  “I became something of a… heretic, you could say.” Baphelus continued. “The Pope was a miserable, despicable creature… but he was powerful and intelligent. He corrupted the faith. He taught that all those who die are subject to the will of the living- that “The corpses of the dead are but nourishment for the roots of our red flowers.” I believed otherwise, because I could hear their voices. Though the undead are usually only fragmented pieces of the people that they once were… I staunchly believe that those who would use the spirits of the dead like simple tools are foul, foul people.”

  Gio thought for a moment.

  “So this Pope… if he believed that the living should use the dead as tools… and your god had died…”

  “You surmise correctly. The King of Red Flowers chose to personally enact the lessons that he taught, ending his ancient and divine life in a selfless act of compassion. His intent was to empower the faith with the remnants of his divinity and herald the growth of a new God. The Pope hid this fact in an act of blasphemous betrayal, hoarding the divine corpse for his own purposes. Even years later, I still struggle to understand how a pious man could misunderstand his chosen deity to such an extent. The church, or at least its upper echelon, then used the corpse’s lingering power to perform a number of atrocious experiments, like the one done to my mother during her pregnancy with me. I later learned that I was far from the first child that they had experimented on… I was simply the only survivor.”

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  Baphelus stretched out his lantern-bearing staff, and light bloomed underneath it. Gio stared in awe at a seemingly endless field of what appeared to be snow, lit by hanging lanterns placed in concentric patterns.

  “I burned the bodies of the other victims… the children murdered by that church, so that they would not be raised and forced to serve as slaves in undeath. This field contains their ashes, as well as the ashes of all those that have pledged to follow me since then.” Baphelus said.

  Ashes. This whole field is made of ashes?

  “It is also my phylactery. I bound my soul in service to them, in an eternal promise that I might deliver peace to the spirits of those who did not find peace in their death. It is a symbol of my commitment to the liberation of the spirits of the dead, rather than the subjugation. Those who rest here… do so willingly.”

  They descended, and the ash whirled away as they landed, revealing a dark glass floor underneath, likely the same substance as the impenetrable obsidian walls that separated the Ringed City. As Gio’s feet touched the ground, he noticed with some unease that the glass floor was warm, almost body temperature.

  The ash-whorls danced, forming the vague outlines of countless figures. Each figure bowed to Baphelus, who waved them off.

  “Walk with me,” Baphelus said.

  Gio followed behind his mentor, and the ash continued to part for them. Gio felt that it would be wrong to interrupt the peace of this place. For a while, they traveled in silence. Gio looked out, in awe of just how much ash had been collected here. It was piled high like snowdrifts, and the bits of it that fell through the air danced like snowflakes caught in a non-existent breeze.

  So quiet.

  A thought suddenly struck Gio. Nothing new, but perhaps a startling clarity of detail. It had been one thing to hear the story from his mentor, but another thing to walk through this place.

  How many… how many bodies would this have been?

  They had been walking for a while. Minutes, perhaps?

  Just how many people are in here?

  Gio looked at the faint outlines of the figures that kneeled at Baphelus’s feet.

  Gio broke the silence.

  “How many souls… chose to follow you?” Gio asked.

  Baphelus let the question hang in the air.

  “Too many.” the lich replied, “Far too many.”

  _____

  A short while later, they arrived in front of a gargantuan metal door, a half-circle of blade-sharp interlocking rings that Baphelus stopped in front of.

  “I must ask that you keep your reflection in line as we enter this place. The things inside are dangerous, and I have no doubt that even reflections of some of them may be deadly.”

  “Rio is… sleeping, so that shouldn’t be an issue. But, Saint Baphelus, what is this place?” Gio asked.

  “This is the Vault of Infinite Repose… my personal storage.” the lich answered.

  “What a… dramatic name,” Gio couldn’t stop himself from saying.

  “Ha,” The lich intoned. “A dramatic name for a vault that contains dramatic things. If you knew even a small piece of the things I keep here, you’d want the name of the vault to be positively legendary.”

  For the personal storehouse of an ancient lich… it does makes sense.

  Gio swallowed. “And… there’s something here that you wanted me to see?” Gio asked.

  “Yes. My… ‘core’, as the Shopkeeper called it.” Baphelus answered.

  With a tap of his staff, the rings of the vault began to rotate, and a wide-mouthed passageway appeared.

  A gust of stale wind belched out of the vault, kicking up ash with a gasping yawn. Baphelus stood in front of Gio, casting aside the wind with barely a flicker of his lantern’s flame.

  “I am Saint Baphelus, and this is my domain. I enter lawfully, with student in tow, for a lesson, as well as routine inspection of my spoils. Grant us passage.” Baphelus commanded.

  The wind was cold and imperious, and it felt like it carried with it a reminiscence of death. Gio thought of cold, calculating dissection, like the kind imposed on a classroom frog. It reminded him of the grisly experiments that he and his friends had seen in the vault where they had faced the undead dragon.

  Most troublingly, Gio knew from his nascent magical senses that it would have done him a great deal of harm, had Baphelus not been here to prevent it. He shivered.

  Baphelus turned to him. “A protective measure from the previous tenant. I felt it easier to implement it into my defenses rather than remove it entirely.”

  “Neutered and de-fanged, the usurper did.” A cold voice rang out.

  “Ah, and it seems that he’s awake. A… vanishingly rare treat.” Baphelus sighed. Even without facial muscles, the exasperation read in his disembodied voice.

  Entering the vault, Gio was treated to the unsettling sight of a gargantuan beast pinned to the ground in the center of a large basin. It had seven bat-like wings, each held in place by a softly glowing straight sword. White smoke leaked from milk-white eyes set in a head like some manner of deep-sea creature. Black and purple sparks danced across its flayed skin.

  “Gio, this is the former guardian of this section. Disregard him.” Baphelus said.

  Kind of… hard to disregard.

  A clawed hand erupted from the viscera of the pinned monster, tearing its way through flesh to reveal a… seemingly normal, albeit naked, human man. The man turned to face Gio, revealing a gap where he had been cleanly cut in half, bisecting him from the top of his head to… Gio averted his eyes, feeling nauseous.

  “Such youth, perturbed easily.” the bisected man cooed. Each of his halves spoke with a slightly different timbre, creating a subtle dissonance.

  “Stop harassing my protege. It is late, and I can tell that his patience for me is waning.” Baphelus said over his shoulder, already moving past the grotesque guardian.

  “Quickened heart races. Patience indeed. Nary a drop of sssuch patienceee… for your oldest victim?” the man spat.

  He turned to Gio.

  “Minest nose, a mirror mage, it smells? How queer. Harken, young babe, and take heed. Prythee not spend too much time with the surly dead, as the lark makes for poor company and less fun. Would thine care for a morsel gift?”

  Before Gio could react, a bit of the creature’s wing folded in on itself, ripping where necessary to create a book- more like a grimoire that emanated black and purple energy like a small sun. It screamed to his knowledge seeker skill so intensely that Gio had to take a step back, lest he be overwhelmed. On its cover, golden ink scrawled out a title in a biting flourish, each illusory penstroke drawing a bead of thick blood from the still-living flesh of the tome. It read ‘On the Subsummation of Identity: a Treatise for Delectable Young Mirror Mages.’

  He knew what it was the moment he laid eyes on the glowing book.The knowledge inside was cut and pressed into a form that would be most digestible for his skill level, eventually taking him to the heights of power. It was a blessed gift of secrets from an impossible being, made just for him. It was as if every screaming wish and whispered desire of his mind had been answered, packaged delicately in skin, and made readable by mortal man. The very thought of reading the book pressed against his mind like a salted finger pressed against the raw skin of a wound- he wanted to read it so badly that it hurt.

  Gio knew that that book would change him in ways that he could not recover from.

  “N-no thank you!” Gio yelled, before Baphelus even had the chance to warn him away from it.

  “Bah, just like the shambling caretaker already. Too cautious, too restrained.”

  Baphelus shook his lantern at the book, and silver chains grasped it, pulling it into the air and then chaining it to a nearby lectern, seemingly left ready for exactly this purpose.

  “Was it worth it? Another piece of your dwindling flesh spent on a flailing attempt to corrupt a child.” Baphelus scoffed.

  Half of the bisected man turned to Gio. “Before I was anything, WE were a knowledge elemental. I KNOW the taste of a SEEKER, and I KNOW that the information present in the book will be worthwhile to the boy… if not now, then later…”

  “Gio, perhaps I should… more properly introduce my vault’s tenant.” Baphelus said, turning back to face the bisected man. “This is the remnants of a former bearer of the name “Vivisection”, a manifested embodiment of the precepts of ‘knowledge gained through cruelty’. Take anything it says with a healthy dose of cynic disregard… and then forget about it entirely. It is merely the lingering corpse of an old haunt.”

  At the mention of the name ‘Vivisection’, the corpse recoiled as if struck.

  “Like all things, the lovely lich has taken that name and ruined it… given it to some soft little morsel that used to suckle from my teats. What else have we lost since then? WE used to have a hundred sorrow-singing tongues that screamed the gospels of old magic. WE used to skitter through the old highways, reaping squalid ideas from the pathetic vermin, and sowing BRILLIANT lessons. YOUR corruption is MY enlightenment. Why, if you little soft-bellied-”

  “That is quite enough, I think.” Baphelus said. As he spoke, a gentle whirl of ash carried Gio away, spiriting both he and his mentor deeper into the vault.