hi

You see—people who pick up this trade aren't quite normal. Normal people stay home and become the miller or the baker and raise a bunch of kids. Adventurers are almost defined by being a little different.

Like, take Lissar, our swordswoman. Big, buff, drinks a lot, what you would expect mostly. Doesn't talk about her family. Skittish about the full moons. Turns out that she got a bad spell for her gender-fixing and ended up with a nasty case of avolitional lycanthropy, which means that her girlfriend has to use a restraining collar whenever there's enough moonlight. (And no, I don't know if they do anything else with it, I have a firm policy that I don't hear anything that happens in other people's tents, even when I do. So don't ask. I also don't get the human gender thing at all. Sounds strange for a dwarf to say, but I almost think that the elves and their twelve-gender system make more sense, at least they're dividing people up based on actual traits that they have rather than vague physical generalizations that are sometimes dead wrong anyway.)

And me, I'm an absolutely normal dwarf, you think. Why would I go adventuring. Well, you may have noticed the odd-colored left eye, but you might also want to look at the things I do—the petty magics and the prestidigitation—and wonder exactly why a dwarf, scion of a decent family in a well-run cavern, would pick up what are essentially thieves skills—

And then you would want to mind your own business. Because that's the code. Everyone has some odd wrinkles in their backstory, it happens. It'll probably come out at the worst possible moment, too. But you don't pry.

So when dude shows up with a bandaged face telling us to call him Brother Healhand and using a bizarre mix of slang that spreads across the last three hundred years, if not more—we knew perfectly well that something was up, and we didn't ask.

Which works up until he ended up commanding, not turning, a full legion of the Smoke King's undead forces. That gets…hard to ignore.

"Hast thou a notion what I should do with these fuckers?" Brother Healhand asked me, sitting pensively on a rock. His bandages were disarranged enough that I could see glowing eyes, and the crystal on the end of his staff was a rather disturbing eldritch greenish purple rather than its usual soft white. I don't think I'm supposed to be able to see that color. I looked at the army of obedient zombies instead.

"Did you do the same ritual as the Smoke King?" Probably not what I should lead with.

"The blood rite of immortality?" Becoming a lich has a body count. A large one. That's why decent people don't do it. Brother Healhand looked away. "People change."

Can't argue with that. I've changed some myself.

For one thing, I'm talking to an undead rather than dying in a futile attack. That's a change. Dwarves have opinions about things that don't stay dead. (Except the Star-Jeweled King, who I think may actually be dead, but people hope he isn't—although even there, there's a kind of relief in the fact that he hasn't woken up, because that would be the Big One, the War at the End of the World, and we all know we're not all getting through that one.)

"You going to stand with us against the Smoke King?"

"Even had I not changed," Brother Healhand said promptly. "My kind are territorial and combative. And the Smoke King is just plain crass."

The enemy of my enemy is not my ally, necessarily, but he's still a guy you'd rather have around than not. So long as you keep an eye on him. "And these guys—"

"Spread the word not, I pray," Brother Healhand said, "but mindless undead have always slightly—bothered me. Nature abhors a vacuum. I feel that Things creep into the gap where the soul was. Which can lead to—unpleasantness."

And these zombies were old. "Do you think we can safely use them to fight the Smoke King's other legions?"

Brother Healhand was quiet for a moment. "I abhor the notion of being the distraction. However. Thou canst picture it, no? Another lich approaches, raises his banner, hails the Smoke King in his lair and threatens him with his own minions, telling him to come on if he thinks he's hard enough. Hardly a challenge any lich could or would ignore. Meanwhile a small team, slipping through the tunnels beneath the mountain— it could be done. Perhaps. The odds are not good but when have they ever been?"

I thought about it.

It might be the best chance we were going to get.

"No heroic last stands," I said. "You distract him and you get out of there, get it? We want to see you again when we get out."

Brother Healhand gave me a wry look. Which is difficult with eldritch glowing eyes. "I did not come to this state by loving the notion of death. I'll be there, with bells on. I would have thy promise of the same."

It occurred to me that given Brother Healhand's age—whatever it was—there might be significance in the fact that about a month ago, he switched to calling us all thou. I think most of us wrote it off as, oh, he talks like that. Maybe not.