Midsummer, Midnight - Southern Aetherland, a sleepy hamlet

  An enormous crimson moon bathed the terrain in eerie luminescence.

  Cobbled lanes wound serpentine between vine-choked walls, cramped cottages stacked like child's blocks. The intermittent yowls of tomcats in heat pierced the midnight air. In stables, aging nags munched hay while sanitation workers labored, shoveling charred dung onto carts that hissed white smoke.

  Daytime bustle had dissolved into drunkards snoring in alleys. A breeze sent empty bottles clinking across stones, the skittering of rats audible through the stillness.

  Into this tableau of tranquility slipped a shadow.

  Then - distant clamor. Hoofbeats and clanking plate armor crescendoed. Sleepy residents cracked shutters, peering at torchlit figures flooding their remote settlement.

  Soon the lanes brimmed with curious onlookers. The hunched village elder shuffled forth, cane tapping, and offered a courteous bow.

  "How may we assist, noble sirs?"

  "We hunt a lich! Spotted fleeing hither!" The lead knight - his silver armor resembling a sealed tin - barked without courtesy. Wheeling his charger, he raised his blade: "Secure the undead before rivals arrive! Glory awaits!"

  "Huzzah!" The company dispersed, weapons clattering, torches probing shadows.

  "A lich? Here?"

  "The mountain one?"

  "Gods preserve us..."

  Murmurs rippled through the crowd.

  Under the crimson moon, the once-tranquil hamlet descended into pandemonium.

  A lich, awakened from mortal remains.

  Outwardly resembling the lowliest skeleton soldier of the Undead legion - except these mindless grunts wear rusted armor and wield chipped blades, while liches don cloaks, wield staves, command legions, and perch atop the Undead hierarchy. The archetypal villain in human tales: cunning, malevolent, theoretically rivaling celestials and demons in power.

  Though the lich currently being hunted hardly fits that grand image...

  Behind the silver knights, twenty paces distant in an overlooked corner, a burlap sack trembled.

  "Did I trespass? Had this land owners, they should've sent notice..." Lich Adam pouted.

  The obese black cat that had been yowling on a windowsill leapt down, waddling into the sack to groom itself. "You're the new lich from East Mountain?"

  The feline's grotesque form - gourd-shaped body, tiny face, jet-black fur with misaligned white lip spots - made Adam's eye-sockets flare with curiosity. "You're a spirit possessing a cat! How marvelous! Had I known neighbors existed here..." His crimson soul-flames dimmed. "Though I'll be evicted soon."

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  "The market's buzzing." The cat licked its paw. "You desecrated the Grulgrul family crypt. The Church plans to burn you."

  "Those bones? I needed skeleton guards! Such pristine specimens buried underground - wasteful! They'd burn me for that?"

  "You're dead already."

  Three seconds of awkward silence.

  "They'll pulverize you!" the cat hissed.

  "My apologies then. I'll return the bones." Adam's flames flickered dejectedly.

  "It's about defiling graves!"

  "Defiling?"

  "They'd burn you regardless - you're a lich!"

  Instead of fear, Adam's flame-eyes morphed into question marks.

  The cat face-palmed (metaphorically).

  Elsewhere, knights stabbed haystacks and kicked doors: "Seen a lich? Black cloak, this tall?"

  Townfolk shook heads, peering from windows.

  In the shadowed corner, the cat whispered: "Return to the Underworld! That's your domain!"

  "Can't. Archlich Brutus hunts me."

  "For what? Dug his ancestral crypt too?"

  "I... borrowed bones from his display skeleton. Hung myself on his bookshelf." Adam jingled the ceiling hook embedded in his skull. "For a hundred fifty years."

  The cat choked. "A century and a half is 'recent'? Clever bones! He never noticed your aura?"

  "The Underworld reeks of death. I masked it."

  "Then?"

  "He tried reanimating me as a skeleton soldier. The spell revealed I'm a lich." Adam recalled Brutus' rage-shaken chamber. The civilized archlich merely had hellknights beat him before tossing him from a tower.

  "But why pursue you now?"

  "Later discoveries... made him less cordial."

  The cat edged backward. "You're doomed. I'm out."

  Adam's phalanges ignited cyan flames, seizing the cat's scruff. "I need a guide."

  "Not my problem!"

  "Or... fresh soul for my new staff."

  "Guiding's my passion!" The cat pivoted instantly. "Where to?"

  Meanwhile...

  Fresh hoofbeats echoed as another cavalry unit entered town.

  "Damn! How'd they track the lich so fast?" The silver-armored captain glowered at his men.

  His knights stood dumbstruck. In peacetime, tales of lich-hunting could charm noble ladies for decades. Yet with knights converging continent-wide, glory remained unclaimed.

  The newcomers advanced down main street, silencing both crowd and silver knights.

  Leading them rode a petite noblewoman - silver ponytail streaming, porcelain features framed by practical armor, sword at her hip. At five paces distant, she raised a gloved hand.

  After murmuring to a grizzled knight beside her, the bearded warrior rode forth.

  "What's this commotion?"

  "Merely... searching for lost items," the silver captain stammered.

  "Midnight searches require torches and armed men?" The grizzled knight snorted.

  Elder intervened with a bow: "We hunt a lich, milord."

  "Lies!" Silver captain's blade jerked toward the elder, only to be deflected by the grizzled knight's lance.

  "A lich?"

  "Yes."

  "Nonsense!"

  A dandyish advisor whispered to the noblewoman: "Lady Eileen, best we avoid..."

  Nodding, Eileen signaled advance. "Secure lodgings. This doesn't concern us." Her expression remained glacial throughout.

  The silver captain exhaled. Who'd ignore a lich? No matter - less competition.

  "Search faster!"

  Hidden Corner

  Adam shifted comfortably beneath burlap. "I'll remain surface-side. Archlich Brutus marked my soul - returning underground means capture."

  "You'll last five minutes! The Church burns liches on sight!"

  "How to stay unseen then?"

  The cat's eyes glinted. "Disguise as knights - those clanking tin cans hide faces well."

  "I'll become a knight!" Adam declared.

  "Are you mad? Knights wield holy magic!"

  "This?" Adam's finger sparked silvery light.

  The cat gaped.

  Passing knights paused nearby. Adam snuffed the glow.

  "You... holy-wielding lich?! Stolen from Brutus?"

  "Common practice." Adam displayed a bone ring etched with runes. "Efficient against undead. Why waste curses on humans?"

  "Thief-liche! No wonder Brutus hunts you!"

  "Enough. Now, how does one knight?"

  "How should I know? Buy Knighthood for Dummies from the bookstore!"

  "Splendid!" Adam's soul-flames danced. "My path clears!"

  The cat face-palmed as armored shadows loomed nearby.

  "Did that sack move?"

  "Draw steel."