Before he could even touch the cottage door, Varus heard the voices of the trio within, and the noise of munching on the food they’d brought back with them the night before. “You know, we could have just gone the rest of the way to the village. We didn’t have to come all the way back.” Tuesday pointed out through a mouthful of food.

  “Yes, but I’m glad we got to spend one more night here. If we have to leave, I would want us to go together. All of us.” Hannah’s reply was soft and full of contentment, “I want to leave here happy.”

  “Besides,” Lithia said through a stuffed mouth, “this way we have a lot more honeyed apples and meat and other things.” She swallowed with a hard gulping noise before adding, “Besides, that’ll make it easier for the village to accept you.”

  Varus felt a little warm glow within himself, and a sense of certainty that hadn’t been there before, grew with it. ‘Whatever happens, I can be sure they’ll have someone around to watch over them.’ He thought quietly as he took in Lithia’s gentle tone. Though he hadn’t known the valkyrie woman long, her unassuming, simple minded approach and intuitive care made it hard to dislike her and impossible to distrust her, and she’d clearly taken to the pair of young girls as if they were her own little sisters.

  And with that warm thought in his heart, Varus opened the cottage door wide and stepped through with the cheery confidence of a King who had won a great victory and was now determined to celebrate it. “Who is ready to go!” He exclaimed, though it was less a question and more a proclamation.

  Three sets of stuffed cheeks faced him all at once, and three hands raised as their faces were too stuffed to speak. Though there were three simultaneous ‘Mi pham!’ cries at once.

  “I need to empty my library, but for now, you can put everything on the wagon.” Varus said, and three heads tilted all at once.

  “Wagon? What wagon?” Lithia asked and glanced with questioning eyes toward Tuesday and Hannah, who both shrugged their shoulders at her unspoken question.

  “This one.” Varus turned his body to the side, allowing them all to look through the door at nothing, and Varus cast his spells. [Summon Object][Bone Wagon][Summon][Skeletal Horse] And a black shadow spread over the green grass. For a few seconds the darkness pulsed like some unholy fragment of night which refused to disappear.

  Then from down below, as if plucked from grave or netherworld or both, a long wagon composed of countless bones rose up, and with it, a towering horse skeleton with bright red orbs for eyes that stared ahead as if it saw everything and nothing all at once.

  Lithia whistled. “Now that is a useful spell. Kind of spooky, though. It’s the sort of thing you’d see a Red Paladin use to escort pilgrims on a journey.”

  “It is.” Varus confirmed with a tiny hint of pride leaking through his voice. “Now load up, and let’s be off. It’ll take a few days to reach the village, and there is one more thing I need to do.”

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  His cryptic statement drew some odd looks, but he didn’t explain himself, he only went to his little library by the ancient earthen road and began to gather up his books. ‘I could put them in my void but… that just doesn’t feel right. Books belong in this world, not…not in whatever constitutes a void.’ He thought as he gathered them up in his arms, stacking one after another in one hand until he had to start tossing them up to the top of the stack, until he had them all, turned around and…

  Stared dumbly at the entrance. The stack was far, far too high when all together to properly fit through the door.

  “I’ll help.” Tuesday said, poking her head around the stack and looking up at Varus with a sweet smile on her face, her little fox tail swishing around behind her.

  “Alright.” Varus said, and set the stack down. He split the single stack into two, then two into four, and four into eight. And from there Tuesday began taking up a small number of books in her arms and walking them to the wagon.

  Hannah, seeing her sister from where she sat, hesitated a moment, then flicked her little cat ears and her little cat tail, and approached without a word and did the same while Lithia hitched up the horse.

  Varus grabbed a now much smaller stack, and began carrying them to the wagon as well, allowing Lithia to prepare and organize everything in the back as they went back and forth, until the library had only one stack remaining, and it was Varus himself who was inside and ready to pick it up and go.

  He paused, took one book from off the top, and set it on the shelf. It was Tuesday who approached to help with the last stack, and when she saw what he did, she asked, “Why are you putting that one back?” Her tail swished a little and her eyes were filled with curiosity at his unusual act.

  “So that whoever takes the cottage next will find something to read. It’s the least I can do.” He said, and though she scratched her auburn head in curiosity, she accepted his explanation otherwise, then picked up part of the stack, leaving only a few for Varus to carry behind her.

  When the last of his books were loaded behind the bundled furs and the handful of furnishings, dishes, his manuscript in progress, and other trivialities, Lithia clapped her hands together and said, “Ready to go!”

  “Just one thing.” Varus said, then picked up first Tuesday, and then Hannah, and set them on the back of the wagon as they giggled and wiggled from his touch.

  Lithia canted her head again, but Varus chose not to explain. Instead he went to the still wide open door and took a long, lingering look at a place that had been home to him for over fifty centuries.

  ‘What an unlife it’s been so far…for the first time in a long time, I don’t know what tomorrow brings, and that’s not so bad.’ He thought, then stretched out one hand to the door, raised one finger, and ran his finger along the surface, the force of his touch serving to carve a message like a quill over paper. “Free home for one in need. I found worlds full of memories in this place, may you do the same.”

  He then closed the door with a gentle click, and his eyes lingered on it before the Elder Lich took a long breath, and he stepped back, turned, and said to the waiting trio, “Now we can go.”

  “I’ll drive.” Lithia said, and gestured to the back of the wagon where Tuesday and Hannah beckoned him with eager, excited arms outstretched for hugs.

  Varus was not about to object to that, and stretched out with his back against the stacked and rolled up bedding, allowing the two little ones to nestle in comfortably at either side of him as the wagon began to roll away.

  Not until he was well out of sight did the cottage begin to grow, and change, and shift to add another floor with a dozen rooms, a front desk, and a few small tables, until it was no longer a cottage. It was an unoccupied inn. But the message on the door remained the same, and never vanished.

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