The Kid Lich Book 2

The Kid Lich Book 2 9 Will P.

Lost Love, Lost Power

After their phone call with the rest of the gang, Billy thought he'd take a nap while Khonshu drove. They had no real destination in mind, at least not to their knowledge, the Fates were taking them somewhere in particular already, but Billy didn't know that and thought he should probably address it.

            "Hey, do we even know where we're going?" Billy asked Khonshu. "Eh, not really. Why, you got anything in mind?" "No, we can figure it out when I wake up, I'm gunna sleep for a bit." He got comfortable and closed his eyes. "Sure, have a nice nap." He heard Khonshu say before passing out.

            In his dream, Billy was in a bar, at some sort of combination bar and casino, sitting at one of the tables. A few things stood out to him right away: first was the smell, the place smelled like alcohol and cigarettes. It smelled of other things too, but the overall effect was somehow pleasant, when it definitely shouldn't have been, which was the first thing that tipped Billy off to there being some sort of magic at play.

            The second thing he noticed immediately was that the place was completely empty. He figured whatever had brought him here was on its way, and there wasn't any real danger in staying, so he just waited.

            After a few minutes a tall and handsome bald black man with a very well-groomed beard walked in, accompanied by a woman. The man was wearing just the sleeveless vest component of a suit, a vertically striped black and purple top hat, various necklaces made of bones and amulets, and sharp gray slacks where the vertical pinstripe design was actually bones, not just dots. He wore sharp dark brown dress shoes with laces.

            The woman was dressed more casually, her flowing and wavy reddish-brunette hair coming down past her shoulders, held away from her eyes by a simple white headband with a small fake femur bone as an accessory. At least Billy thought it looked fake. He couldn't detect life signatures in a dream to see if it was real, but he still found it to be innocuous enough.

            She was wearing a very pale, nearly white, slightly green dress, low-cut, and thoroughly distracting Billy by being absolutely gorgeous. Her beauty was distinct in how effortless it looked. He watched them come in, and they pulled out the two chairs on the other side of the table from Billy and sat down.

            "Ah, so here we all are." The man said, leaning back in his chair and crossing his ankles on the table. "We should get started then, not much time." The man said. "We've got enough, hon. Tell 'im 'oo we are." Ah. What was that accent? French? Jamaican? Billy couldn't tell.

            Billy spoke up. "Yes, please do! Sorry, I'm still trying to figure out if I'm in danger or not." He said with a single nervous chuckle at the end. "Fo real, lil man? You really don't remember us, huh? We go way back." The man said.

            "Huh? We do? I swear this is the first time I've seen either of you." The woman let out a low whistle and said: "Hoo, he really did a number on himself with that memory charm. You gotta give 'im credit, 'e don't do anything 'alfway." Billy still wasn't sure on the accent, but he'd wager a guess at French-Jamaican. Lousiana?

            "Which brings us to tonight's business." The man took his feet off the table, leaned forward and interlaced his fingers in front of his face with his elbows resting on the table, watching Billy closely. "Oh, cool, yeah, what are we here for?"

            "We are here to remind you of two very important things." The man said, with some seriousness and weight to his voice. "Two things ya made yaself fahget, hon." The woman added. "Um, okay." Billy wasn't sure about this. Demons could try just about anything to steal your soul, some of it could get to pretty advanced levels of subterfuge. He was very naturally good at occlumency, the magical art of protecting one's own mind from penetration or modification from others. He mentally put his mainline base "wall" up.

            "I'm gunna need to touch ya head, kid." The man stood up and started reaching for Billy's scalp with his right hand. Billy stood and backed up, splaying his palms in front of him. "Whoa! Hold on there. Random entities don't get to screw around in my brain randomly, thank you very much." Then something strange happened. The woman looked at Billy, winked, and blew him a kiss. She said: "Let 'im do it, friend, it'll be fine."

            Billy didn't care much at all about whatever the man was going to do. At the moment anything she said sounded like a good idea to him. Some very small part of him in the back of his brain mumbled something like "so much for occlumency..." but it was more of a ghost of a feeling than a conscious thought.

            The man came forward to Billy put his hand on his head, and said a few incantations. Had Billy been fully aware of his surroundings, he would've placed the language as Creole French, but as it was, he was more of a receptacle to suggestions of whatever the woman said.

            Until he wasn't. It hit hard, fast, all at once. Two things: "Katarina," a name, a face, a body, a body he knew well. Then images, lots of them, flashing through his brain. Memories, he thought, now himself again. There were lots of individual memories he was seeing, but not much variation in content.

            It was mostly scenes of him and this woman, Katarina, enjoying some... er, "bedroom time." Or some very adult activities, though there were other things he caught: them getting food, them walking down Bourbon street, her introducing him to a shadow demon that later became his friend, but by the end, Billy remembered everything and really wanted to see her again.

            He remembered who she was, what she was, his importance to her... things he decided he'd address when he was there again and the time was right. That finally ended, and the woman, Maman Brigette, he remembered, asked him: "You okay, hon?" He was. "I am... I think. I can't believe I did that. Made myself forget her."

            The man – the Bone Baron – said: "You told us before you did it you had to, that you'd never be able to focus on anything else if you were able to remember her. What you are to each other." Billy sighed. "Right, that. I think that was true. I suppose I know where we're going now..." Billy said the last part more to himself.

            The two deities didn't address it. "Right, anyways, there's one more thing I gotta remind you of. An important thing: a magical technique you developed on your own, with a little guidance from me. May I?" They seemed benevolent enough, from what Billy could tell, so he told them: "Sure."

            He placed his hand on Billy's head again, and Billy felt power shoot through him. Through his skeleton, specifically. It didn't feel like someone else's power, it felt like his, in a form he had forgotten. He could only see what it was doing because this was a dream: but his whole skeleton had lit up a deep green, a deeper color than his normal lime-turquoise fusion his magic cast in, and it felt strong. Hearty, formidable, filled with endurance, weight, power.

            After this part finished, a second wave of his own power hit him. This time, he could see his skin taking on a distinct dark black color. His skin was now rock hard, like immovable stone. An advanced armor spell! "Hit something, kid! You're about to wake up!"

            Billy got what he meant: Give us a show before you go. He stood, turned around and saw a sandstone pillar holding up the building. This a dream; they won't have to repair anything. He threw a heavy and hard right cross at the pillar, the thing exploded outward in the direction of his blow, crumbling like paper.

            As the roof caved in and he began to wake up, he heard the Bone Baron and Maman Brigette laughing. "Oh, 'es still got it, dat one!" Brigette said as he found himself back in the car with Khonshu again. Well that was fucking sick, he thought to himself. End of Pt. 9