Despite what Lithia had to say, it seemed she’d almost forgotten her very reason for coming out in search of him. She had her nose buried in the book and followed seemingly by following the sound of Varus’s footsteps, entering his home without even thinking about it.

  Strangely enough in his own mind, Varus didn’t think anything of it. He glanced over his shoulder and saw her holding the book up to within a finger span of her face, clearly deeply focused on nothing but the words on the page.

  And so instead of returning to his slanted writing desk, he walked to the table at the center of the room and dragged the chair audibly across the floor so that Lithia could find it without having to break the flow of her eyes across the words.

  Varus pulled the chair back to give her a place to sit, and two steps later after her careless step kicked it, the chair bounced across the room to shatter into pieces against the wall. Varus sighed as Lithia lowered her hands, the book creeping down until she could see over the top of it and she beheld the damage she had done.

  “Oops…ah…I’m sorry about that…” Lithia mumbled as she and Varus looked at the scattered remnants of the chair. “I’m from a heroic line, so… my strength can get away from me if I’m not careful. It works out great being an adventurer but not so much for everything else.” Her face was turning ever deepening shades of red, but Varus barely heard anything after she mentioned being of a heroic line.

  “A hero line, you say?” Varus asked as he recalled his resolve to find out the fates of his friends.

  “Yes…why?” Lithia asked, her eyes darting from the ruined splinters of the chair, to Varus, and back to the pages of the book she was so anxious to devour that she was shaking with anticipation.

  “In my lifetime nobody ever used that term, but I knew the original ‘Hero’ and I can only guess that the term ‘Hero line’ came about after my death, probably from the enhanced bloodlines that followed him?” Varus asked it with a calm voice, but wild hope dominated his mind to such a degree that he stepped closer, looming over the blonde valkyrie and rubbing his hands together as his eager nerves frayed in anticipation of her answer.

  “That’s what the stories say.” Lithia confirmed. ‘I-I guess I kind of have to pause reading… just for a minute, I did wreck his chair.’ She told herself and with more reluctance than she’d had in a long, long time, she lowered the book to the table and then placed her hand over the page with one finger directly on the last word she read to mark her place.

  It was at that moment that she realized what he’d said, and her eyes felt as if they’d grown to the size of saucers, “You knew the Hero?”

  “I did.” Varus answered her incredulity with quiet confidence before he stepped away, took the chair from his desk, and sat down on it so that he faced her. “He was one of my very closest friends. I fought and died under his command in the war against the Demon King.”

  Lithia’s wide eyes narrowed, “That can’t be right.” She said, “That was thousands of years ago.”

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  Had he been able to blink, Varus would have done so, as he could not, he only stared for a long, lingering moment, his red eyes pulsating as he took in her words. “Thousands?” He asked, his bone jaw hung open, “I thought it had been a few hundred, maybe. But thousands?”

  “Six thousand, my teacher said.” Lithia added, “So you can’t have known him.”

  “I did.” Varus answered and set his hands on his hips, the robe crinkled a little from the force of his defiant stance while his mind spun over the sheer scale of time that had come and gone while he lived in isolation. “Why would you suggest that I couldn’t have?”

  “Because you’re still…” Lithia looked the Elder Lich up and down and waved her hand along his length, “You.” She emphasized.

  “I’m immortal, dimwit. I don’t age.” Varus retorted, but before he could wonder how dumb this hero actually was, she shook her head.

  “No, I mean, you should have gone crazy by now. For one thing, the Varus of legend was just a really strong human. I suppose if he’d lived, he’d have been one of the Heroic Lines, but he died in the Battle of Kandar. But he was just a knight, not an archmage, sorcerer, or necromancer. There’s no way he’d have had enough magic to expand his mind to span centuries. No story I know of has him consorting with that kind of magic. And even if he did, nobody can resurrect themselves without help, and his entire force was wiped out except for four people, none of whom used magic or reported raising him from the dead. Unless someone really powerful raised him, the only option would be to rise from the grave with unfinished business, and he’d lose his mind and become a rabid undead in a lot less time than six thousand years. So you can’t be him.” Her finger tensed on the pages of the borrowed book, and the feel of the paper gave her pause. “Can you?” She inquired.

  “I am. Though I had no idea it had been so long. I thought it had been maybe three or four hundred years, certainly no more than five hundred.” Varus answered and inhaled deeply. “The truth is, you’re right. I didn’t consort with necromancy, and I couldn’t use magic. I don’t know how I came back from the dead. I woke up on the battlefield, I was the only living…sort of living, being around, and I was this.” He touched the chest of his robe and felt himself relax as he relayed the story. “I woke up with the impulse to ‘do what I wanted to do most in the world’ and I understood that I could now do exactly that. We’d passed by this cabin on the march, it had been abandoned, so I moved into it, set everything up that I needed, and I have been writing books ever since.”

  Lithia chewed on her lower lip and stared longingly down at the story that was begging for her attention, but carried on by answering, “It sounds like somebody raised you from the dead. Somebody really powerful, it takes a lot of mana to expand a mortal mind into an immortal one.”

  Varus rubbed his jaw with a thoughtful air at Lithia’s answer, but one part didn’t make sense. “Who would do that? Why would they do that? If it had been someone on my side then I’m sure they’d have said so, and there were only a few people who were really skilled with magic, at least back then.”

  “I can think of only one person.” Lithia answered after a drawn out silence, “And you’re not going to like it.” She added, prompting Varus to go still.

  Lithia drummed her fingers over the text and said, “According to what I was told in the family history, at the battle where you…Varus, died, the Vicelord of the Demon King wasn’t present. What if he came along later, after the battle was over, and searched for the strongest person on the battlefield and raised you from the dead?”

  “Why would he raise me?” Varus asked and slapped his bony hand on the robe just above the knee. “I wasn’t on his side. And according to you, he wasn’t in either location, so he came too late to do anything meaningful. So what was the point?” Varus pressed the question home, but Lithia was prepared with what she considered an obvious answer.

  “That’s easy.” Lithia said offhandedly, “So you could become the next Demon King.”

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