The fractured moon hung in the sky above the city of Vale as it had for many years, and those on the streets continued about their nightly lives as if there was nothing to worry about. All of them were completely unaware of the thing many of them would call a monster that was starting to walk the streets. It was something from an age long past, and that had clung to the earth with a determination to strong to be broken by a force as small as death.

While he knew that some would think of him as a monster, Naze had never considered himself to be particularly evil. Sure, he had stooped to some acts of depravity every once in a while, but some acts that some would consider evil were required to bring about charities that others would consider blessings. He could understand why others bearing the title of lich had stooped to such depths as actively embracing evil, but simply didn't share the need to increase his own power through the detriment of all others. Things that he could get through the deaths of others could be gotten though just a small bit of patience. Small for him, lifetimes for others.

He brought his hands up into view. The corpse he had stolen to temporarily house him seemed to be holding up quite well. The skin was pale and looked like it was starting to tighten, but he had made sure that it wouldn't decompose. The disguise was doing its job well enough, he had gotten a few queer looks, but little more. He spied another one of the things that had been something of a mystery to him thus far, a shop for something called "dust". He had head a few men talking about robberies centering around this "dust", so he assumed that it was something valuable. He took a few of the gold coins from one of his pockets and flipped them around his fingers, wondering if he had enough to purchase some of this dust.

He walked across the smooth black street and pushed the door open. An old man waved to him from behind a table. He approached the man, gazing around the shop interestedly. There were many, he would guess hundreds of what looked like gemstones cut into various prisms hung in display cases all over the shop, and large tubes lining the walls that looked like they were filled with colored sand. He wondered what all this was for. The man behind the counter smiled welcomingly at him and said in a raggedy voice "What can I do for you?"

Naze looked around the large room again, than looked to the man. "So this is a dust shop, eh?" the man smiled again and nodded. Nathan pointed to one of the crystals in the display between him and the man and said "Can I see that one?" in a curious voice.

The man raised an eyebrow and regarded him cautiously, but opened the back of the display and pulled the red prism out and handed it over carefully. Naze took it, and as soon as his fingers touched it he could feel the magical energy thrumming through the crystal. The energy was an unmistakable hot, the kind that only elemental magic could be. He knew that the power inside of the crystal must have been very powerful for him to feel so strongly through the relatively weak link to him that the body had.

He handed the crystal back to the man, who looked relieved that he had not tried to take it. He was about to ask what exactly dust was used for when the door to the shop behind him was thrown open, causing it to slam loudly against the wall. Both men already in the shop turned their attention to the source of the noise, and found themselves facing something that neither one was expecting.

A group of about seven men were coming through the door, all of them carrying what looked like weapons. The foremost one of the group held up his weapon and pointed it towards the man behind the counter, saying "Give us the dust." in a deathly serious tone. Naze noted with interest both the strange white mask and the pair of small antlers protruding from the man's forehead.

Another of the men held up his weapon towards Naze and said "Put your hands up and turn out your pockets." while taking a few steps toward him. He let out a frustrated sigh. He hadn't anticipated fighting in this body, and had therefor not prepared for it. He doubted that he would even be able to cast any magic without causing extreme damage to the body. So he came down to a question; was it worth it? He took a moment to weigh the question in him mind. The man took another step towards him, and pushed the end of his weapon into Naze's face, shouting "Put your hands up!"

Naze glanced behind him at the cut gems of elemental power, and an idea popped into his head. Not one that particularly complemented the years upon years of study of the arcane, but sometimes simple problems required simple solutions. He closed his fist and drove it through the glass display case, opening his hand briefly to get a gem in his hand. He could feel shards of the glass embed themselves in his arms and hands, and felt glad that the flesh was already dead.

With the gem in hand, he spun as quickly as he could and raised his arm to the head level of the man who was threatening him. The sharp end of the gem buried itself in the temple of the man, and he crumpled to the floor. The rest of the robbers turned their attention to him quickly, and leveled their weapons on him. Without hesitation, they all fired on him.

Numerous bursts of energy drove themselves through Naze's current body, each one accompanied by a loud percussive sound. The last of the barrage pushed him against the edge of the display case. There seemed to be some expectancy hanging in the air, as if everyone was expecting him to crumple to the floor. He knew the opportunity for scaring people when he saw it.

He started to laugh. It wasn't a hearty laugh, but more of a chuckle than anything else, twisted into a wet gurgling sound thanks to one of the holes in his chest. He couldn't see their faces through their masks, but their body language made it clear that they were put off, to say the least. He raised an arm towards the downed man, and blasted as much necromantic power through the corpse as possible. The magic coiled out from his hand and encircled the corpse like a snake, lifting it from the ground and standing it limply up on its feet. As this happened, the necromantic energy started to distort the spell that he had used to keep his current body from decaying, now instead causing his hands to shrivel and blacken.

The magic flowing from his hands stopped, and the body of the robber now stood still under its own power. Without hesitating, Naze commanded it to attack the others who had come with it, and it did. It's slow and shambling movements made Naze cringe as the quality of his work displayed itself in front of him, but it did attack with the weapon still clutched in its hand, each twitch of its finger causing another earsplitting discharge of energy.

The two men closest to the newly-made zombie decided that it would be a good idea to tackle it, and found that they were right. Both men held the creature's arms down with their knees, talking to it as if they could bring the man out of whatever trance they thought he was in.

It seemed that things were calming down when a cry from outside the shop rang out and grabbed the attention of the robbers. Naze looked past them and saw something that he wasn't entirely sure how to interpret. A quintet of teenage-looking girls was standing on the other side of the street, each one in a practiced battle stance and holding weapons that were almost as befuddling as the warriors themselves.

One of the girls held what looked to him like a dueling rapier, but on the handle of the blade there was a complex mechanism and several vials of the same colored sand that was in tubes along the walls of the shop. The next weapon that Naze was able to identify was a scythe, one that he had always approved of whether it was being used to harvest a crop or lives. It seemed to have additional functions however, if the numerous metal additions along the handle as well as the blade itself were anything to judge by.

The next weapon was fairly easy to identify and divine the primary function of, it being a pair of bright yellow gauntlets that looked hard enough to crack a skull easily. There was a belt of small cartridges wrapped around an area about halfway up the gauntlets, and he assumed that those did something as well. The last weapon looked fairly unassuming in comparison to the others, it looking like a small black version of the weapons the robbers were using, only with the addition of a long black blade on the top.

Naze was starting to feel like he was picking up on a common motif for each of the weapons. Each one seemed to have some thus-indeterminate amount of secondary uses. With the weaponry of the newcomers determined to some degree, he turned his attention to the fighters themselves. His second look at them proved just as, if not more confusing as his first. They were all teenage girls, all built svelte to the point that he doubted that they would be able to fight very affectively. Each one seemed to have one primary color as well, which puzzled him. It had always been his opinion that members of a team (assuming that they were a team) should garb themselves similarly. One was red, one was white, one was black, and one was yellow.

In the half second that it had taken him to process this information, they had already started their charge. The first one to meet with their adversary was the one clad in yellow, and the secondary function of her gauntlets was reviled. Strong blasts of an unfocused magic energy pounded their way out of the gauntlets and slammed into the nearest robber. The man was blown off of his feet and thrown to the ground. The other three girls entered the fight quickly, and Naze would've loved nothing more than to watch them fight, but at some point the two men who had been holding his zombie down had gotten up to turn and face their new opponents, apparently interpreting the four girls as a larger threat than the zombie. Under normal circumstances they might have been right, but the red crystal of elemental power lodged in the side of its head changed the situation slightly.

The girl in a red hood over a black skirt slammed the blade of her scythe into the ground and seemed to take aim down its length. Whether she meant to or not, the first shot from her weapon flew wide of her intended target, and instead found its way to the dust crystal.

Naze had walked the earth for a long time, some might say far longer than any mortal had a right to, and as a consequence it was difficult to surprise him. The violence of the explosion that resulted from the single misfire, without a doubt, surprised him. If he hadn't seen what had happened himself, he would have guessed that a contingent of mages had all agreed to annihilate themselves in the most devastating way they could muster simultaneously. A single spark from the fiery eruption of the zombie's skull fell onto the tall tubes of dust mounted on the walls, and then everything turned into a blur.

Fire and lightning, ice and steam, all kind of elements engulfed the small store and everything in it. Naze could just barely see a few of the robbers and the four teenage warriors thrown clear of the elemental explosion by its initial blast. He knew that neither he nor the shopkeeper would be quite so lucky. He tried to construct some kind of shield around himself, but the body he was inhabiting was incapable of handling the power required.

He was thrown around like a ragdoll for about half a second before the cloud of magic started to thin, and he was launched out of the shop, the grey stone of a building across the street rushing to meet him halfway through his journey. In the ensuing contest between stone and bone, stone was quick to emerge the victor, Naze's spine and one shoulder blade shattering nearly beyond recognition. He fell about one story back down to the street and landed like a wet bag of sand, something below him squelching under his weight.

He looked down to find the source of the noise, and was further surprised to find the lower half of his body gone. Sickly looking blackened entrails were hanging limply from what had previously been his abdomen, but was now little more than a useless flap. The various partially rotted viscera and entrails betrayed the undead nature of the body he inhabited, but he doubted that there was anyone immediately present who would recognize it.

He maneuvered himself to lean up against the wall with his arms, somewhat surprised at the fact he still had arms. He felt a few muscles in his back scrape against the remnants of his shoulder blade and the break in his spine a few inches below the base of the spine. If the force governing his movements was still the nervous system, he would be paralyzed.

Now in a much better position to observe the proceeding event, he stopped moving. The four teenagers were looking at each other, making sure that they were unharmed, until one of them spotted him. He cursed quietly to himself as the one who had seen him, the one wearing the red cloak, said something to the others than started to run towards him. What she had said to her comrades was drown out by the still roaring cacophony of the exploding dust shop, but their immediate actions were more than enough to judge by. One started to tend to the robbers who had been thrown free of the blast, binding their hands and feet, while the other two attempted to get whoever was still in the shop out.

The one running towards him seemed to realize something, whether it was the lack of anything below the torso, the diseased look of the organs hanging out, or something that he wasn't aware of he didn't know, but whatever it was seemed to call fourth some urgency that hadn't been there before. She crouched low to the ground for a second before doing something that Naze had never seen a human do. He would have described it as a blink, except that it was clearly not any kind of arcane magic, as well as the fact that she didn't really disappear. She accelerated to a blur, red pedals being thrown up in her wake, and came to a stop kneeling over Naze, her hands hovering over him and shaking like she was afraid she would do some kind of further damage to him.

He smiled up at her, realizing as his lips pulled back that several of his teeth had been knocked out as well. She looked like she was about to speak, but quickly clutched her hands to her mouth and turned away. Naze wondered with amusement if it was the smell or the sight that had done it. He tried to speak, but after a few moments of wet gurgling it was clear that speech was going to take a little more effort than normal. The girl heard the sounds of his attempt at talking and, finally let go of whatever attempt at decency she was holding onto, allowing her stomach to empty itself on the sidewalk.

Naze attempted to speak again, feeling that this time he would be much more understandable. "What's your name, girl?" he said, his voice still sounding wet and bubbly from the clotted blood that was leaking slowly into places it shouldn't have been, namely his throat.

She looked at him with an incredibly concerned expression and said in a voice that reflected both confusion and worry "What?" like she didn't understand the question. Naze rolled his eyes and said again "Your name, girl. What is your name?"

She looked taken aback by his casual nature, but said "I'm… I'm Ruby." Naze nodded. With one final look down at his ruined body, he decided that it would be a better decision to cut his losses and start again with the knowledge he had gotten so far. Not everything in this body had to go to waste, however. "Well Ruby…" he started, making to push himself off of the wall slightly "…I need you to do something for me, you see? Are you willing?"

Ruby stuttered, saying "I-I really th-think we should get you some-" and Naze cut her off. He said "Look at me, I highly doubt that anything is going to help me at this point. I need you to do something else." Ruby leaned forward, listening carefully. Naze tried to speak again, but found his throat blocked by viscera again. He turned his head slightly to the side and coughed, sending flecks of blood spraying out. Ruby recoiled slightly, and he realized that he hadn't quite turned his head far enough.

His throat clear again, he said "I need you to open the seam at the base of my spine, and pull the gem out." The look of confusion that came across Ruby's face wasn't entirely unwarranted. She recoiled again, but Naze fixed her with a stony gaze and said "Yes, that simple. After you take it, I need you to keep it safe. I would prefer you not tell anyone about it."

Ruby shook her head and said "Wait, what? Why?" Naze gave an annoyed sigh and said "I haven't got much time, girl, just do it!" The sternness of his voice seemed to have a much greater effect on her, as she immediately put her fingers to the back of Naze's neck and started to feel for the stitches he talked about.

Knowing that she would do as he asked, Naze withdrew from the corpse, his consciousness withdrawing from the very crystal that he had asked. His mind reentered his real body, far away in the city he had been in moments before. The dark and stingy air seemed far more comforting than the outside. He took his withered hands off of the magical orb suspended above an ornate stone plinth and stepped back from it.

The gem that he had told the girl to retrieve and keep was special, enchanted and inscribed with runes nearly too small to see that allowed him to project his own magical power over vast distances. He mainly used such crystals to control his undead directly, but situations where such control was needed were few and far between. The attention that had to be paid to each miniscule detail, combined with the fact that fixing a mistake was near impossible meant that each one represented a significant investment of time that could've been spent doing something else. He hated to see so much effort go to waste. He had confidence that the girl, Ruby, would do as he had asked. She didn't seem the type to disregard what she thought were someone's last words.

His hand went to his side and removed the heavy tome from the chain that kept it secured solidly to his body. Of all the artifacts that he had created, this was the second most valuable to him. The book bore numerous enchantments, likely more than his own phylactery did. Amongst most liches such a thing was unheard of, but the book contained every scrap of knowledge that he had ever uncovered, making it plausibly one of the most powerful and dangerous objects on the planet. With a brush across the cover, the countless locks and wards, both physical and magical, snapped open. Pages turned quickly of their own accord, knowing already what their master was looking for.

The book stopped on a blank page, and Naze held a decrepit hand over it, focusing on a spell that he knew well since becoming a lich. Glyphs appeared on the ancient paper, glowing brightly and smoking as they did so. Not only the knowledge, but the experience of what had happened was stored in those markings. I he, or anyone else who managed to open the book decided to look back on the page, they would not only have a written record but live the experience as if it were their own. Once the entirety of his venture into the city was recorded, Naze replaced the tome on its chain and turned to leave the large room.

He walked through the stagnant corridors, every footstep creating a myriad of echoes as they bounced their way through the vast subterranean complex that Naze called his home for so long that even he had lost count of the years. It was down in these cold dark depths that he had performed enough research to last eons. It was down in these depths that he had truly earned the title "Naze the Eternal".