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Chapter One — Rem’s Revenge
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Chapter Two — Shelf-ish Shopping
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Chapter Three — Bath Battle
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Chapter Four — Clean Clothes
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Chapter Five — Belligerent Butlering
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Chapter Six — Sparring Stupidity
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Chapter Seven — Savouring Strength
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Maps and Information
The Empire
[img: https://i.imgur.com/YRqm2H7.jpeg]
The Flaming Steppes
[img: https://i.imgur.com/6P0Vjw5.png]
If you want to join the Dead Tired Discord, and see chapters being written live on Tuesdays and Thursdays, then you can find a link here: LINK!
Thank to you soon!
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Chapter Eight — Barbarian Buddies
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Chapter Nine — Mantis Maid
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Chapter Ten — Learning Limpet
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Chapter Eleven — General Grievances
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Chapter Twelve — Underwater Undead
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Chapter Thirteen — Colourful Creatures
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Chapter Fourteen — Boney Battalion
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Chapter Fifteen — Family Friendly
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Chapter Sixteen — Creeping Calamity
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Chapter Seventeen — Mem Mumbles
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Chapter Eighteen — Cowardly Critter
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Chapter Nineteen — Tactical Terror
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Chapter Twenty — Introduction Interrogation
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Chapter Twenty-One — Memorable Mem
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Chapter Twenty-Two — Novel Necromancy
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Chapter Twenty-Three — Fossil Fortress
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Chapter Twenty-Four — Dog Days
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The Travels of a Desperate Undead
The Travels of a Desperate Undead
I woke up with a hunger. For a certain definition of hunger.
When I first became a lich I lost many of my earthly desires. Notably, hunger and any sort of base need. For a time I was satisfied with this, but I found that, surprisingly, that lack of need for sustenance drove down my creativity by a noticeable margin.
The solution, of course, was to poke at the problem with some magic. A minor compulsion, placed on myself, and delayed with a complex array of randomizers and timers. Such that, in the end, I would have sudden cravings for certain foods, or views, or activities. Nothing I couldn't ignore, but it always amused me to fulfil these desires.
"I," I declared. "Am a little hungry."
The others in the room with me looked up.
We were in the main control centre for the F.O.S.S.I.L. Head, buried deep within the gigantic construct. Seventeen was manning the helm, and the limpet was pouring over some manuscripts, preparing herself to learn some new magics. Mem was sitting off to the side, with large Alex-made mittens over her scythes so that she could pet the limpet's dog, and Rem was knitting. Or trying to, at any rate.
"I can help with that," Alex said.
"Hmm," I said. "No, I'm thinking of something in particular. It is a vile and unhealthy food. Not something someone of your caliber should ever produce."
"Oh," Alex said.
I stood and made my way out the door. I didn't require anyone, but Seventeen to follow, but they certainly did, only stopping when I arrived on the main deck under the noon-day sun.
"What are you doing, Master?" the limpet asked.
I hummed, then cast a few mage hands and had them start to carve symbols onto the deck. "I'm creating a portal. I know a place where we can get what I desire with relative ease."
"Oh, alright," the limpet said. It saddened me just a little that even magic this complex wasn't met with the same wonder as it would have inspired just a week ago. The limpet was beginning to expect me to just be able to do anything, which wasn't always the case.
"Mem's never been portalled before," Mem said.
"It's not as fascinating as you might think. I suppose all of you will wish to come along?" I asked.
I refrained from sighing at all the curious nods I received. And the hiss from Rem that I summarily ignored.
Kneeling down a little, I tapped my bony fingers onto the symbols I'd engraved and allowed a small amount of magic to pour into the runes. An eldritch glow suffused the deck, and the runes activated sub-runes, which in turn pushed magic, raw and wild, into constructs that began to push out into this world in the form of whirling pools of magic.
"Pretty!" Mem declared.
"Yes. Now, every stand in the centre," I instructed. There was a circle in the middle, cleared of any interference, and obviously made for people to stand upon. The group, myself included, came to stand upon it. Then I just needed to adjust a few things, and we were almost ready to go. I merely had to trigger the spell arrays.
"Mem wonders what this does," Mem said.
"That's the aiming array," I explained. "To go from our universe, to another one. The one we're heading towards is called Arth."
"What's ours called?" Mem asked.
"I don't believe our multiverse has a name," I said.
"That's sad," Mem said. "Mem names it the... Memtiverse. Now it has a name!"
"That's wonderful," I said.
"I don't know if I want to live in this multiverse anymore," the limpet muttered. "Um, should you be touching that?"
My head whipped around to see the mantis poke her midden-covered scythe into a rather fragile set of runes.
"Please don't touch-"
The world warped.
We crashed with all the grace of a pigeon who'd swallowed a fireball, onto a wooden deck.
The first thing I did, of course, was observe the state of the magic around me. The portal spell was still active, still counting down, and still aiming us towards my intended destination. It had merely changed so that we would be dumped in areas of narrative importance along the way. Interesting.
All I would need to do to tweak that was.
"Uh, hi there!" said a youthful voice.
I glanced around. My companions were coming to their feet and taking in their surroundings as well. We were upon another deck, though this one was made of wood. A large balloon, done in garish colours, was held up above us, and we seemed to be floating some hundred-odd necrometers above a large body of water.
"We weren't expecting guests, sorry! Do you guys need anything? Water, a snack?"
"Uh," the limpet said. She stood up and came face to... chin, with a bright-eyed young woman in a partially-armoured blue dress and with a rather dashing hat that failed to obscure the pair of ears sticking out of her head. "Master, is this where we're supposed to be?"
"Broccoli," someone said. "I don't know if they're all that friendly."
A glance to the side revealed a young woman with wings for arms-a harpy?-next to a rather plain human girl and a small man with a pair of wings fluttering on his back.
"Oh, come on, they just dropped out of nowhere. The least we can do is be polite. Look, they have a cute maid, and a couple of mantis people, and a nice skeleton guy, and this girl looks very nice too."
"Um," the limpet said.
"Thank you," Alex replied. "I do believe we've arrived at the wrong destination. I do hope we aren't imposing upon your hospitality."
The bunny-girl snorted. "Don't be silly. My Beaver is open to anyone."
Alex and the limpet blinked at the same time. "How very hospitable of you," Alex said. "I... yes, well. That's... wonderful."
"Thanks!" the girl said. "So, what brings you aboard our ship?"
I stood a little taller and dusted off my suit. "A small mishap with some teleportation magic. Nothing to worry yourself over."
"Oh, wow, that's awesome! Well, not that you go off track, but that you can teleport. Will you be staying with us for long?" the bunny-girl asked.
"Broccoli, they're obviously... a little strange," the harpy replied.
"Awa, they, um, seem nice?"
The Broccoli girl-was that truly her name? What sort of parent would name their child after a vegetable?-clapped her hands. "Wonderful! We can have a surprise sleepover, and we can talk, and we can learn all sorts of cool things about each other, and by the time morning comes around, we'll be the best of friends."
I started pushing more magic into the portal construct.
"Oh, and I love your maid outfit, and your mantis-butler outfit. You'll have to tell me where you got those!"
The magic took hold, and yanked us away.
I sighed in relief.
We landed in... a bedroom?
A window against one wall... no, not a window. It was a screen of some sort-using some kind of technology to transport a live image of another location to the wall-which was displaying a scene of a cityscape. Huge buildings, towering high enough to touch the sky, with small vehicles darting around in the air.
Large images flashed everywhere in the cityscape, calling for the watcher's attention with scenes of violence and near-pornography that would have shocked the people of my home world.
Within the room itself, a room lit by small magicless devices, was an occupied bed, some simple furniture of a style I was unfamiliar with, and a lot of discarded clothes strewn about the floor.
"Interesting," I said "A world where technology was embraced over magic."
"What in the fuck!" one of the bed's occupants screamed. She-a young woman with a mechanical arm and severe burn scars over part of her body-raised her non-magical, metallic arm towards us, and a small opening appeared over it. "Myalis!"
I noticed a small cat to the side. No, not a cat. The image of a cat superimposed upon another machine. It felt... very intelligent, a machine being controlled by an intelligence that was not in this room. An old one, at that, and powerful in its own way.
"This is... irregular," the cat-machine said.
"No shit," the girl in the bed said.
Another girl raised her head. Dark-skinned, with wide eyes partially hidden behind the covers she held up to her face. "Cat, is that an antithesis?"
"Uh," the other girl said.
"Mem says hi!" Mem said.
"We're sorry for the inconvenience," Alex said. "We're having some technical difficulties with our portal magic. It shouldn't be an issue for very long."
"Portal magic?" the cat-like creature asked. "Please, tell me more."
"Perhaps I could," I said as I turned my magical senses away from the humans in the room. The two girls had some interesting technological implements stuck in and on them, but those were all superficial, and while interesting, they weren't the goldmine of information that the other one had, even if it had a tendril connected to the metal-armed girl.
"Are you attempting to bypass my firewalls?" it asked just as my scrying magic reached it. I observed an interesting system in place to make scrying more difficult. I analyzed it, catalogued the interesting parts for later, then moved on past it. "That was an interesting breech method."
I sensed a whole host of devices and scanners turning our way. Not merely in the room, but from near-orbit, from the local planet's moon, and in dimensional space.
"Bone Daddy looks busy," Alex said.
"Would someone please tell me what in the god damn is going on?" the metal-armed girl on the bed said.
"Yeah, sorry," the limpet said. "Mem poked a thing, now Master's magic is working strangely. What's that thing?"
I spared a bit of attention from my magical poking and prodding to look over at what the limpet was pointing at.
It was a device covered in long, sinuous tentacles, some of them excreting a sort of juice that glistened in the room's artificial light. One of the girls, the one not connected to the artificial mind, blinked. "You mean Mister Tentacles?"
Alex whipped around and placed his hands over the limpet and Mem's eyes."Perhaps it's best you don't observe that," Alex said.
"Mem wanted to touch it!"
"No," Alex said.
"What about me?" Rem asked, her scythes raising.
"I don't have sufficient hands," Alex admitted.
"Myalis! Some explanation please! Because I'm used to kittens interrupting my fun time, not... a fucking skeleton in a suit, a girl, two giant talking bugs and a fucking catboy maid!"
"Ah," I said as I felt a magical tug. "It seems the portal's reactivating. It was interesting meeting you," I replied.
"Please contact us again," the intelligence said. "We have questions."
I nodded, then felt the naval-tug of teleportation yanking us away.
This time, we crashed into a sandy dune. Our footing, quite unstable, led to us tumbling down the side of the dune until we came to a stop at the bottom.
"Master, I'm starting to dislike this," the limpet said.
Something metallic crunched. A two-part sound that was at once a menace and a warning. "I ain't too keen on whatever this is either."
I stood and found that we were in a desert. Even a quick scry around the area revealed nothing, but endless sands in all directions. The only life here was small, and swift to scurry away at the approach of my magic.
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