A Bored Lich

Elero stood in between Kilot and his destroyed forge, yet Doevm didn't share her pity as he looked down at the old Dwarf and said, "As soon as that escape amulet detected a threat, it should have teleported you out of the city, not twenty feet away. My group will get slaughtered if we rely on weak products."

The sudden critique rubbed salt in Kilot's wounds, on the surface. What Doevm actually meant to do was to test Kilot's reaction, because some things still weren't adding up. Irregularities, such as how Kilot was left out in the open for so long, seemed all too pressing. In addition, if the goddess could easily destroy Kilot's forge, why couldn't she blow them up right now? The most important concern, however, was why Kilot was in front of them.

Elero was visibly shocked at Doevm's sudden critiques as she punched him in the shoulder. "Twenty feet or twenty miles, who cares?"

Kilot shook his head, "How's this?" He then tugged at his bandages, displaying the skeletal arm that usually hid underneath.

Doevm nodded and the tension left his shoulders. "Are you just losing your touch then?"

Kilot scoffed. "Hardly. The escape amulets weren't finished. It was a damn-near miracle I got mine working at all."

"With the goddess in play and the God of Evil unaccounted for, anything could happen," Doevm said. "Kilot, I need more of those Escape Amulets, and better."

Kilot slowly stood up and dusted himself off. "Yeah yeah. Don't think I won't stop because of a half-baked assassination plot."

"About that..." Elero's voice trailed off as she stepped aside, no longer obstructing the destroyed forge.

The wrinkles deepened on Kilot's face as his black, beady eyes took in the sorry state of his forge. It was as if he were watching the Bloodwood burn all over again. He tugged on his beard. "Would you look at that?" he muttered. "What happened here? Wait, it's coming back to me."

"The goddess tried to smite you," Doevm explained. "You're lucky there's anything left."

Elero's jaw dropped. "Wait, the goddess?" she asked. "As in the omniscient deity?"

"Unless you know of another," Doevm sighed.

Kilot put his hands on his hips and let out a self-deprecating chuckle, his back still turned away from them. "Figures. I designed my forge to keep out mortals, not gods. Doevm, my forge was based on your library, did you know that? I wanted a place like yours so I could keep to myself without anyone bothering me. I think if Arthur hadn't dragged me out of it, I would have long died there."

Doevm nodded. "I know. Gwenivier let it slip."

Kilot slid a hand over his face, still in thought. "Of course she did, that blabbermouth. It took me years to copy most of your enchantments and barriers, the ones that aren't black magic anyway. I had your designs as a guide. I can't, or rather, I don't want to imagine what it must have taken to build your library. That's why I never understood why you burnt it all down."

A flicker of emotion briefly broke through Doevm's placid expression, but he remained silent.

"I never understood it," Kilot continued. "You should have left something behind, so that you wouldn't be forgotten. Your library should have been that monument. I just wanted something of my own to leave behind, so I'm not forgotten like you and Arthur."

Doevm paused for a few moments, and made a bold guess. "The goddess offered you that powerstone, didn't she?"

Kilot furrowed his brow. "How do you figure that?"

"That's where the source of the explosion came from," Doevm said. "The amount of energy within that powerstone exceeded its capacity tenfold."

"I nearly took it too," Kilot chuckled. "It would have made a hell of a weapon, but I'm not the kind of fool who would willingly accept death. I'm just a normal fool, and so she couldn't kill me."

Doevm narrowed his eyes at his last few words as the final piece of this puzzling attempt on Kilot's life finally clicked into place. "The goddess can't kill people directly?" he asked.

Kilot nodded. "If I'd picked up that powerstone, I'd be a dead man."

"That's why the goddess sent an assassin," Doevm concluded. "It was a two-pronged plan to kill you directly or, failing that, blast you into a place where you could be killed by someone else. You weren't bait, and the goddess has already failed."

Kilot blinked twice. "You lost me. Assassin? Bait?"

Doevm gestured with his chin to the pile of meat lying twenty feet away from him. "We took care of it."

Kilot nodded, although he didn't spare the corpse so much as a glance, his gaze locked onto his destroyed forge. His expression kept shifting before settling on a frown.

"We'll find you a new forge," Elero suggested.

Kilot shook his head. "No. No you won't, none like that one. None like what I had in the Bloodwood either. Even if we find a new one, who's to say it won't get blown up again? You people reek of danger. You know what? I think I want that arm now." He held out his skeletal arm.

"Kilot, I don't blame you but are you just going to quit like this?" Elero asked.

"Heal the bloody arm," Kilot insisted.

Doevm let out a sigh as magic poured out of his chest. He pulled Kilot's bandages off, exposing a skeletal arm wrapped and bound together with a strain of a Bloodwood plant that he had modified.

Doevm swept his hand along the length of Kilot's arm, and the plant uprooted itself as if compelled by an almighty force. It fell to the ground and withered away within seconds. Kilot's arm, having lost its support, slapped weakly against his side.

The mana around Doevm flowed into the holes in Kilot's shoulder, where the plant had taken root. The flesh shook as new tendons, muscles, and skin slithered out of the bony shoulder socket. Kilot tried not to wince from the pain. The newly formed nerve bundles were a long forgotten sensation reacquainting itself with his mind. One by one, Kilot curled his fingers into a fist.

Kilot held his new arm up, turned it over, and smiled with barely hidden tears. "There we go," he said. "How I've missed you, old friend."

"That should be everything," Doevm said.

"Aye, and I hope this is the last I see of you," Kilot said. "No offense."