"That's not the answer!" the beast shrieked. Without warning, the monster exploded. A huge circle of interlocking bolts of lightning took its place, snaking across Vorr's limbs and chest in a wild dance-and the lightning vanished, leaving no trace of the beast.
Vorr fell back on the floor, his feet thumping into the stone. He half sat up, still exerting himself against the monster's now-vanished throat. After a second to look around, he quickly got to his feet. Nothing was left.
All was quiet again, except for a horrible ringing noise in his ears. He looked up the ladder again and saw that the hatchway was open at the top. If the false lich was anywhere, it was up there.
Slowly and deliberately, the general drew a long dagger from a thick sheath at his belt. He reached for the ladder again, placing the dagger in his teeth, and started up.
"Worked my last defense, hidden no more, has not," said a familiar voice from the top room. "My astrosphinx much trouble to collect was. Immune to spells, I see, the treacherous general is, and I on the helm sit, spells of my own gone for this ship to feed. Bad my condition looks."
Vorr continued climbing. He was halfway up.
"To bargain for my existence I should like," said the voice. "Material items you will take. Knowledge from my head you will not. Perhaps this knowledge valuable is?"
Vorr reached the top of the ladder. Cautiously, he peered into the room beyond. As expected, the room was very small, roughly cubical and barely fifteen feet along each side. No decorations graced the walls, as far as he could see. He crouched slightly, then charged up the last few steps and leaped free of the ladder and into the room, turning to see if enemies stood behind him.
The room was almost empty. An undistinguished helm sat against the far wall. In it sat the false lich, motionless. Next to the helm chair was a rickety table of rough-hewn wood, on which sat a few small items, including a jade bowl, a small cloth sack, and a mirror on a stand. Vorr recognized the mirror at once as the one Skarkesh had relied upon for scrying on Teldin Moore. He supposed the lich's medallion was in the sack. Four torches burned against the walls at eye level, their flames giving off warmth and odor but no smoke.
"Not good enough was our bargain?" asked the robed skeleton. "Not good enough for the scro general to keep his word to an old one? More does the general want-perhaps the Spelljammer as well as the treasure within it?"
"You betrayed us, Skarkesh," said Vorr softly, turning his fall attention to the skeleton. The huge knife turned in his hand. "You set out own soldiers against us. You meant to sabotage our fleet once you got the cloak from Teldin Moore." Vorr took a slow, quiet step forward.
"Lie you do, lie to justify treason," hissed the skeleton, "and unwise it would be to carve on these old bones. Immune to magic maybe you are, but to ignorance not. The Spelljammer find I can. The cloak find I can. Of more I know, much more, but not for telling when this body… dead is."
Vorr came closer. He was six steps away. The knife blade's tip rose. "I weep for you," he said.
"These treasures yours are," said the skeleton, making a brief gesture toward the table. "The seeing disk of the Spelljammer, yes, and a magical mirror, for spying upon Teldin Moore-"
"— and scro allies," Vorr finished, five steps away.
"Norscro allies, fool!" snapped the skeleton. "But good it is for the projecting of my image, to allow the casting of spells to charm or compel action, to plant a traitor among the friends of Teldin Moore and reveal all their plans upon the making! A traitor among them now is, and Teldin's secrets to me it has been sending all along!"
Vorr glanced at the mirror. Four steps. "Who?"
Skarkesh made a tiny gesture with one finger. "Who? One word, then, am I worth, then with galley slop to be put out on a jettison when it I speak? Done it is." A skeletal hand reached out toward the table and made a gesture at the mirror's surface. Immediately, the silvered glass turned black.
"Watch you must, and learn," whispered the false lich, never turning its luminescent eye sockets from the general. "If bargain for existence I must, all clever secrets shared with the general alone will be."
Vorr kept his attention focused on the skeleton, then gave a fast look at the mirror when he saw an image forming on it out of the corner of his eye. He did not recognize the person there, but he memorized the face and clothing. The person would not be difficult to locate among Teldin's followers.
"Of great value that one is, beyond worth to me as a spy. Alive must that one be taken when all others are cut down.
Sufficient that is to keep your interest?" Skarkesh stared impassively at the general. "Satisfied you are that these bones must together stay? Willing you are to work with this old one to gain the Spelljammer?"
Vorr glanced once more at the mirror, but the image was fading, to be replaced by the normal mirror's image of the torchlit room. He looked back at the false lich. A thick thumb slid against the edge of the knife blade, feeling its sharpness. A bead of red appeared where blade and skin met. "No," said Vorr.
He lunged forward. The lich snatched the jade bowl at its side, flinging it and its contents at the general.
Vorr instinctively turned his body and raised his arm to block the blow, trying to prevent any liquid from splashing in his face. He had almost reached the helm when the gloppy substance in the bowl struck his chest armor, spattering pieces of green goo everywhere. Vorr grabbed for the skeleton with his free hand.
The false lich simply vanished in his grasp. A new monster took shape on the helm, a smaller one that easily evaded his grasp and hurtled past him, under his outstretched arm. It looked for all the world like a withered bright-red spider with a serpent's head and pale, glowing eyes.
A neogi. An undead neogi wizard.
A tremendous heat began to burn through Vorr's chest armor. With the first real fear he had felt in decades, General Vorr cut at his armor with his knife, scraping a huge chunk of the glop away and flinging it against a stone wall, where the slime hung, green and glistening.
A dozen pinpricks of white-hot pain stabbed into his face where the green slime had struck him. It was the deadliest living substance in all the known spheres. He had only a dozen or two heartbeats left until the rapidly growing slime devoured his entire body, with all of his weapons and armor, turning him into a vile pool of ooze on the ancient stones of this ship. With a flick of his wrist, he stabbed through the straps holding his plate armor together, hurriedly flinging the chest plate away from him with the vast majority of the slime attached to it. The rest of the upper half of his armor followed only moments later, the sizzling sound becoming more pronounced as the slime dissolved the steel and leather like the most powerful acid.
The clicking of the neogi's claws sounded behind Vorr's back. He spun and saw the little creature as it reached the hatchway down to the next level. He remembered that he still held his slime-encrusted knife, and he threw it.
The blade struck the little spider-being in its neck, knocking it off balance and against the stone wall beyond it. The neogi staggered, then emitted a peculiar warbling shriek.
"Eating at me! Eating at me!" it screamed, and began a mad circular dance around its end of the room.
Vorr felt as if his face had been splashed with acid. He could barely see through the haze of agony. Desperately, he grasped one of the totches from the wall and broke it free of its sconce. The torch flickered as he grabbed it, almost going out. It must have been kept fueled by magic, he knew; now that he held it, the fire consumed the wooden torchstick normally. Eyes and lips squeezed shut, he held his face in the bright searing flames and thought of life.