When Varus set his boney foot on the hard-packed dirt of the ancient road which lay between the forest and his cottage, he, not for the first time, was glad he’d spent so much time mastering his magic after rising from death. ‘I never had much use for it as a knight, but there’s no denying how useful it can be when you really need it.’ He thought with a sense of relief and a single grateful prayer to the dark mother and father of Amends.

  While never the most devout of men in life or death, he knew the story well enough. That the God and Goddess of his world had once been mortals divided by hatreds not of their making, and those ancient hates had made them into great and terrible monsters. That they came by chance to love one another, and the god of their world brought them into his service, where they did great and terrible things, until they merited reward and punishment both at once and in equal measure.

  His teacher and head priest’s voice, sonorous and rich even after so long, still rang out in his mind as if Varus were a boy all over again. ‘To make a glorious world they cannot share. To watch the lives they make bring pride and shame. To be forever outside looking in, and to have only a minute a year together for every lifetime of love between bonded pairs, until the ending of the world and the coming of Ragnarok…’

  That was how the story went, at least in part. But it was not until the moment when Varus stood on the long, empty road, and looked down its length until the horizon itself cut him off, that he understood a part of why the story struck so many as so sad. ‘I’ve been on the outside for five thousand years, and never felt the need to ‘look in’ on anyone or anything, I even put off learning about the aftermath of my death. But now, thinking about them out there, living, doing, being, growing, and never getting more than a raven’s eye glance at them? The dark mother and the dark father were truly punished harshly for whatever they did in the old world…’

  He inhaled deeply, raised a hand to his chest, and began casting physical enhancements on himself. Though he could not tire, and his speed was substantial, there was another matter to consider. ‘Lithia went out alone, a reckless thing to do at best, and idiotic at worst. If adventuring guilds have not become completely incompetent since my living years, they’ll surely have sent out a party to find her or provide backup. I need to reach Lithia before she reaches the village, and I’d wager good coin that she can carry both those two at great speed with little effort.’

  With that thought heavy on his mind, Varus used every enhancement he could think of to increase his speed. Sprinting spells, pace enhancement, even time compression and a spell that added a few inches to his height so he could take longer strides.

  And when it was done…he ran.

  Dirt flew up in chunks behind him as his feet ripped across the ground like a stormy wind over the mighty sea, the world would have been a blur to a living person, but to an Elder Lich, everything was clear. From the noise of wolves who, compared to him, were all but unmoving, to the swaying of the branches and the bright leaves that caught the light and cast shadow or carried dim shades of themselves to dance on the ground below.

  Behind the Elder Lich, a cloud of dust and dirt rose and obscured his body so thoroughly that anyone behind him would think a minor dust storm had been stirred up, rather than realize that there was one moving figure to blame.

  And while he ran, Varus tried to think of how quickly the would-be hero adventurer might have decided to travel. ‘If she ran, I might already be too late. It was what, a week or more for a skeleton that never stopped, found a village? But those weren’t especially fast, I wasn’t in a hurry, but she might be?’ That thought made sense. “Lithia is a good person. She wouldn’t want to make the journey hard or keep them outdoors for long, especially knowing how hard it was for them being lost in the wilderness. She’ll run, and run hard.” He muttered that under his breath as he rounded a wide bend only one hour later and saw…

  He stopped in his tracks with such decisive sharpness that the force of his run stirred up the ground thirty paces ahead of himself. The clods of dirt and rock briefly clouded even himself as the dirt behind him caught up in the breeze and hid what lay ahead of him with a thick layer of the dark brown filth, but before it had, he saw them for himself.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  ‘Lithia? Tuesday? Hannah? Why are they here?!’ Varus exclaimed in his head. Even taking their time, they should have been much, much farther away from where he’d just found them.

  They were encamped just off the road, the dancing flames of a little campfire rose from a small pit, and the faint smell of sweet roasting apples wafted through the air. The tent was nothing special, just the cloak of Lithia held upright at an angle by two sticks on one side, and staked taut at the base with two long, thin needles. The trio themselves were seated cross legged around their fire in line with one another, and munched steadily on apple slices stuck to the ends of small blades.

  Their heads spun all together at the rumbling noise of Varus’s charging feet, and Lithia sprang to her feet, setting herself between both Tuesday and Hannah, she drew out her blade and put one hand out at her side, barring the children from moving forward, or Varus from approaching. She gritted her teeth and began activating what martial skills she knew while her bright blue eyes sought to penetrate the flog of floating dirt that floated between herself and Varus.

  “Stay back!” Lithia snapped the order, though whether she meant it for her wards or for the source within the cloud, even she didn’t really know.

  Her heart pounded in her chest as she began running through the list of known monsters in the area, ‘What could go so fast that it could make a cloud of dust in front of itself…? Or is the monster itself a cloud of dust…? No, that’s stupid, but…maybe?’ She pondered, and as the cloud did not move, she addressed it.

  “I don’t know what you want, cloud creature, but I promise I mean you no harm. I’m just…waiting. If you move on, I won’t attack, do you understand me?” She asked, and lowered the tip of her blade ever so slightly in a gesture of peace.

  ‘She cannot be serious right now?’ Varus wondered privately when she tried to speak to the dust cloud. Only… as the dust thinned, he could see well enough to know that yes…yes she was.

  “Really? Have you ever heard of a ‘dust cloud monster’? Ever in your life? What is the adventurer’s guild even teaching you all now?” Varus asked, his tone so thick with sarcasm that it could have been used to slather over hotcakes in place of syrup.

  As the dust continued to clear, Varus saw the pair he sought out, and the heart which crumbled to dust millenia before, leapt in his chest as relief washed over him. Their brief tension, evident by the tense muscles, bared, sharp little teeth, bristling tails, and flattened ears, vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

  Lithia’s face became a bright red blush as Varus’s remark highlighted the absolute absurdity of her question at the same moment he dispelled her sense of impending danger.

  He stepped beyond the cloud and began to walk at a brisk, steady, hasty pace that was not quite a run. It was Tuesday who spoke first. “Did we break something when we left, if we did, I’m sorry, please don’t be-” Before she could start the word ‘mad’ as she’d intended, Varus brushed past Lithia, crouched, and embraced the two young girls in a bear hug that captured them both at once.

  “I was wrong to send you away.” He said with a gentle, almost humbled voice, “I’m sorry. I was right about my reasons, but wrong about my actions. And worse, I never even bothered to ask what either of you actually wanted.” Varus apologized and picked the pair up in his arms, and it was Hannah who first found her voice.

  “Does that mean you’re double sorry?” She asked in a tiny slightly ‘squished’ voice.

  “Yes. I am double sorry.” Varus replied to her without even the slightest hesitation.

  “So that means double treats today?” Tuesday’s equally ‘squished’ voice asked as her arms wiggled free to grab the clothing of the Elder Lich and press herself against his bony chest.

  “Yes. Yes, I suppose it does.” Varus remarked with a chuckle as Lithia turned around, sheathed her blade, and said with a supremely smug, self satisfied grin upon her face…

  “See? I told you so. All we had to do was camp out for a few days just out of any range of detection, and he’d come running as soon as he realized he’d made a dumb mistake by sending you away. You know what that means? I win the bet, and your dessert is mine.” Lithia’s cock grin was met with groans from the pair, who now remembered their wager, and their lost dessert. Regrettable loss or not, they returned the hug of the now contrite Elder Lich.

  Varus however, not to be outdone, remarked, “It’s only dessert if you eat it after dinner. But if you eat what is normally dessert for dinner, and I give you dinner for your dessert, all she wins is stew.”

  “Yay!” They cried out, flinging up their arms in delight while Lithia snorted and mumbled something about ‘cheating’ under her breath that none of the trio paid enough attention to catch.

  “Shall we go home?” Varus asked.

  “Yes!” The pair exclaimed, and Varus set one upon each of his shoulders, gave a tilted nod toward Lithia to tell her to follow, and began the brisk walk back home once again.