Varus was back at work in short order, while he did occasionally use the bed in his cottage to rest his mind, he had no real need to sleep. And when the creative fire was lit in his soul, he would often ask himself, ‘Why should I sleep?’ The question would then be followed by a joyful and spirited rebuke that, ‘Sleep gets in the way of being productive! I have worlds to make, why should I lie down and do nothing!’ With that, he would without fail sit at his desk and scribble out lines that sometimes made him wish he could smile, or wish he could cry…

  ‘I was wasted as a knight. This is what I should have been doing from the start.’ He told himself while the gentle snores of Lithia, Tuesday, and Hannah continued around the room. The noise was strangely comforting, like a metronome for a musician, and the world on paper continued to grow one word at a time.

  ‘Victory is never certain no matter how determined you are, but defeat is certain when you’ve lost all hope.’ He wrote the hero’s words with glee and recalled the Hero’s face when he’d said those very words before the fight that turned the tide some five thousand years ago.

  “I am spectacular, aren’t I?” The protagonist said, and Varus deliberately avoided looking in the direction of the imaginary figure. “Come on, don’t be like that.” He said and set his arm on Varus’s shoulder. The Elder Lich hunched over his manuscript a little more, ignoring the ghostly figure.

  “You love it, and you know it.” He said with a cocky smirk, and worse, he was right.

  “Come on, don’t taunt him, ass.” The love interest remarked with a roll of her eyes, “He’s got a lot on his mind, he hasn’t lived around ‘people’ for an age. What if the undead are considered really attractive now, he’ll have to build a fortress to sequester himself all over again!” She gasped and covered her mouth with one hand as she sucked in a breath, “The horror!” She mocked Varus before letting out a silvery laugh.

  “B-B-Be nicer! It’s been a big day and he’s finishing our story up, the l-l-least you can d-do is not t-t-tease him!” The Priestess complained with her slender fists balled up around her staff, the hood of her white robe was down and her face was scrunched up into some semblance of a glare.

  ‘You’re too cute to be scary.’ Varus thought to himself as his fictional friends, the ghostly echoes of his real ones, seemed to mock him on the verge of finalizing his novel. ‘It’s fine. Really. Not that you’re wrong, mind you. I don’t know anything about the world out there any longer. I have no idea what I’m going to encounter, or how I’ll fit in, or even ‘if’ I can fit in. Lithia means well, and I am hopeful. I don’t think she would lead me wrong on purpose, but she’s…’

  “Kind of dumb. I know.” Hero said with glib dismissal, “But,” He said and straightened up, suddenly far more serious than before, “I think she has a point. Much as I hate to admit it. And who knows, it might do your work good to have some real people around instead of just some rebellious fictional friends like us. Besides, you still haven’t really gotten the story on what happened to the people you based us on, and let’s be honest, Lithia loves a good story, but there’s almost no chance you’re going to get a good lead from her.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The protagonist had a point. A sharp enough one that Varus paused his work to think it over more. ‘I suppose I don’t even have to stay settled. If everything goes well, I could even hire adventurers as escorts. I could pretend to be a summoned undead and…’ Now that plan… that one held promise.

  “Oh great, now look at what you’ve done.” The love interest said and gestured to the Elder Lich who was now staring up at the ceiling as he lost himself deep in thought. “We’ve gone and lost him again, and there was only one chapter to go!” She groaned.

  Priestess however, shook her head. “N-N-No. We’ve been saying ‘one more ch-chapter for ten ch-chapters now!”

  “Either way, we’re done for now.” Hero said with a shrug, and his imaginary companions faded to nothing, leaving Varus’s thoughts as he worked out what to do as the only thing occupying his mind.

  That process of planning out the journey to the living was not as complicated as he thought it would be, and in short order, the ancient undead was out the door as quiet as a mouse creeping over the floor to avoid waking a cat, and he’d set himself to the task of packing whatever he thought would be of use out of the cellar.

  ‘I wonder how much my pocket dimension can hold?’ He asked himself and hefted a chest-high barrel up in his arm as if it and it’s contents were merely a feather, then he turned around to face the swirling blue sphere of his pocket dimension, and he hefted the barrel in through the gap. The blue void expanded briefly to encompass the object, and then it was gone.

  “I don’t know why I never bothered testing this before.” Varus muttered under his breath, it was a minor complaint against his past self, but one he set about correcting. Barrel after barrel of timelessly preserved goods were moved away from their spot against the cellar wall and then into his private storage void.

  The massive space was easily two or three times the size of the actual cottage, and for the first time in a long time, Varus wondered about the previous occupant. ‘What kind of person stored so much for just themselves? The cottage was clearly not meant for more than two people, and yet they stored more than they could ever consume…’ He shook his head. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d think the cottage itself was alive. Like the inn from that story of the two lovers…’ The details were vague in his mind, recalling only that the inn itself was a manifestation of the Mother Goddess who made the world, and so it provided what was needed for those who asked with loving hearts for the Dark Mother’s grace.

  ‘That’s a myth, though.’ He reminded himself as he emptied the last of the contents of the cellar into his personal void. The cellar now stood empty for the first time since he’d settled there.

  A sense, vague, but still present, of faint sadness struck him as he looked at the cold earthen walls and shelves that once held bounty enough to feed five villages. “Whoever you were, who made all this, stored it, kept it, preserved it, if my unlife ends, I hope to meet you in the life to come. And when I do, I will thank you from the bottom of my soul. I never needed your bounty, but my little ones did, and for that, I am grateful.”

  It wasn’t exactly a prayer, not to the Dark Mother or the Dark Father, and not to the distant dead of the ancient past, but it felt right to say it nonetheless.

  Predictably, there was no answer, and Varus ventured back up the steps, opening the wooden hatch, and stepped out into the light of the morning.

  As the latch closed up behind him, the faint sound of whispered words reached him, “You’re welcome.”

  Varus stood stock still for a moment, but there was nothing else, no other words, just the sound of the wind in the forest, the rustling of the blades of grass, the faint chirping of birds announcing the start of the day.

  And in the cellar down below, out of both mind and sight as he returned to the entrance of his home focused on the next stage of his unlife, barrels of apples, eggs, jars of meat, and a myriad of other foodstuffs, appeared again as if they had never emptied, waiting until they too, were needed by a hungry soul.