Mort woke.
Or, more accurately, he was aware.
He didn’t know where he was, only that it was cold and damp and he lay on something hard. Cautiously he moved a finger. Then his arm.
So far, so good. He wasn’t dead. He tried to remember where he’d been. Slowly he remembered… An inn. A pub.
“Bugger all, I must have had quite a few” he said to himself. Still, with that much ale and that much… He couldn’t remember. One thing he DID know was that he should also have a hangover to end all hangovers, if it was enough to cause him to black out like that. No, wait, he’d only had 2 or 3 pints, not his usual 10 or 20.
Mort experimented some more. Toes? Wiggling. Right. He focused on his head. Neck? Working. OK, now we’re cooking with Goblin rocket fuel.
Should he test his eyes? You know, open them? Best not to rush things, he thought. Never was a morning person. There was something off, though, and he couldn’t quite place his finger on it. What was he so afraid of? Mort sighed.
And of course, that was when he’d found he hadn’t really been breathing. You never seem to notice that you breath. No one is ever really aware of it since it’s just reflex, but when you have STOPPED doing something which you’ve been doing all your life, it eventually sinks in, as it has for Mort.
He waited.
Breathing continued to utterly fail to happen.
He wasn’t holding his breath, either. He just wasn’t breathing.
“Errrr…” he said out loud.
Further inventory was needed. He listened. Ah, yes, that was something else. His heart had, as it were, also failed to beat. Again, one never quite notices such a thing until it’s stubbornly failing to happen.
Mort’s eyes opened wide and he REMEMBERED. The pub. His bottle labeled “Fer Speshul” he’d emptied into the keg. Killing the barkeep. Brill ale. Seeing the …
…LICH.
How did he know what that was? He’d heard about the idea of a Lich before. Anyone who dabbled in Dark Doings knew, logically, what a lich was, but no one he knew had ever seen one and lived.
“You didn’t either, yeh silly old pillock” he said.
Sitting up, now he could take in where he was. It was a crypt. Others lay on stone slabs near him, men and women, partially decomposed. One of them moved and a low groan escaped him. Yes, now he remembered. The thoughts of another mind in his own, the shambling armies of Undead. Falling upon townspeople, guards and anyone else who got in their way. Feeding on those who came to stop them, who got in their way, ripping them to pieces and feasting on the flesh of… “Oh no” Mort said…
“BUGGER ALL! I ate a PALERDIN’!”
Mort spat and tried to wipe the taste from his mouth but there was no saliva to work with. Of all the revolting things he could now remember, he just HAD to have gone and eaten a Paladin, didn’t he? I mean, that Lich in his mind just HAD to make them eat one of THEM, didn’t he? Killing a Paladin, sure, no big deal, he’d done that plenty of times, but EAT one? Why not poop? I mean torture the Undead minions at your command, make them dance, sing “I’m a little teapot”, but eat a Paladin? That was just wrong, that went beyond any torture even he could come up with, and he’d come up with plenty.
“Pull yerself together, Mort old son.”
There was some steps ahead of him leading upward and, he presumed, out. That was as good a place to start as any, and he may as well get moving. Look on the plus side, he thought, at least you’re not shambling anymore. “Never could abide shambling, me” Mort said to himself as he stood.
Some of the others were beginning to get up as well. One woman, rather young when the Scourge took her, sat on her slab and quietly sobbed.
“I … I ate them” she said.
“Wut, a Palerdin? Aye, me as well, but ye’ll get over it. I figger I’ll walk out an’ eat’er’few maggots or some cow poop ter get the taste out’er me ‘ead.”
“No. I mean, yes I ate a Paladin as well. But I… I killed. My family. My children. My husband… I killed and ate my…” she paused for a moment, choking back dry sobs. “He begged, my little boy begged, tried to pull me from his sister and I…”
She slumped forward and cried.
Mort nearly said something very Mort-ish along the lines of “Stop yer whimperin’ yeh cow! So ye killed yer kin? I killed me own mum, never looked back! Did ME a world o’ good if I do say, an’ weren’t the first o’ me fam’ly I killed an’ et, neither!” But oddly enough what left his mouth was “Aye, lass… Aye. It weren’t yew wut did tha’… It were a Lich. Ya didn’t know what ye did, now, did ye?”
Then he sat, put his arm over her shoulders and she sobbed dry tears on his chest. “There, lass. It weren’t you what did that. They knew that in the end I’m sure, and they’re in finer places now than us. Cry now, luv, there’s a good girl. Yer alright. Mort’s here, Let it all out.”
They sat like that for a full five minutes. In that time, several other cadavers had gotten up, looked around, some muttering, and walked out.
“All done, lass? That’s good. Now, yew listen ter Auld Mort. It were a Lich what did that, killed yer family. It were a Lich what made you thus, ye see? Yeh didn’t do nothin’, but now yeh CAN do somethin’. We all can” Mort said softly.
“I … Don’t understand. What can I do? What is there? I’m dead! UNdead!! I’m a monster.”
“Aye, y’are. But yeh walk, don’t ye? And I have in mind somethin’, oh aye. Somethin’ Mort is a might good at yeh see? One of me favorite words of all time.”
She looked at him with green glowing eyes in the semi darkness, a question written on her decayed features.
“Revenge, Miss. Revenge. Whatever it was wut did this to us? We can make tha’ bastard pay and pay dear, can’t we?”
Gradually her face changed. From sadness to a firm, determined stare. Her jaw set and Mort could hear the faint grinding of her teeth.
“Yes. Revenge. Thank you, Mort. I think I like the sound of that word very much. You know, you remind me of my uncle who helped raise me. I think revenge is just what I need, Uncle Mort.”
She hugged him, stood, and ran up the steps.
“Wull slap my head and call me Margret… Did she just hug me?!?”