A Bored Lich

Thomas nodded, thought for a moment, and his eyes widened. "So I should get you to punch me until I'm skinny again! My Undead form will be more powerful with everything I've eaten. That's so smart!"

Doevm would have sighed again, but it hurt to do so. "As many times as I've threatened to, I haven't, nor will I ever, literally whip you into shape. As for your second misunderstanding, it's quite the opposite. If you give into your Undead instincts after consuming so much, it will be anything but powerful."

Doevm's Shadox experiments, written in his early Lichdom, may have been reduced to cinder, but the disappointment after funneling priceless materials into one shadox, only for it to turn into a "flesh ball" of chitin, feathers, scales, teeth, and other random limbs, was a stain in his memory. He consciously reminded himself of such failures because his naïve, fruitless experimentation methods taught him to think logically; lessons he built upon after he mentally matured and turned those failures into successes. 'Never confine your thinking to one solution,' Doevm thought to himself.

Doevm looked on at his swollen friend Thomas, who was visibly confused, and nodded. "You should also practice controlling what you've eaten, or rather the new powers you acquired."

Thomas's left eye twitched. "What the hell Doevm?" He blurted out. "You're the one who said that I can't give into my instincts in the first place!" He slapped his chest. "You said I couldn't control this! I could barely adapt to the lycanthrope powers I got! What kind of training just makes my life harder?"

Doevm nodded, not even a stir in his calm expression. "I said that you couldn't control your powers, only manage them."

"Isn't that a contradiction with what you just said?" Thomas asked. He took a breath to calm himself down, but Doevm could still sense his frustration seeping through their shared connection.

Doevm explained: "You perceive a contradiction because you have not considered every possibility. In fact, both statements are true: you cannot control your power but your power can be controlled. Let me show you." He then pulled an artifact out of his spatial ring and tossed it to Thomas.

Two slits stared back at Thomas, and a third slit below them stretched across the bottom of the colorful mask like a wide grin. Whether Thomas felt the need to avert his gaze or examine the rest of the mask, his fingers traveled to its edges which, unlike most jester masks he'd seen, ended abruptly without extravagant feathers or bells, the exception being the four screws at the left, bottom, right, and top of the mask. The screws excitedly shook to his touch as their enchantment resonated with his undead presence. His Undead instincts, in turn, resonated with them as his eyes darkened.

"Thomas."

"Thomas?"

"Thomas."

"Thomas!" Olpi shook Thomas out of his stupor, and he set the mask down so fast he practically threw it aside.

"What happened?" Thomas asked. He couldn't resist stealing a glance at the mask. Despite Doevm's encouragement, something tugged at the back of his mind.

"Why don't you tell us," Doevm asked. "You seemed to stare quite fondly at it."

Thomas let out a nervous chuckle. "My head felt hazy just holding that thing. It's supposed to help me control myself?"

"You will have to adapt," Doevm said. "That mask suppresses your instincts, which allows you to draw a portion of your dormant powers without unleashing your instincts. It has three settings: the first level allows you to control the composition of your epidermis, the second allows you control over your muscular system and limbs, and the last setting allows you to transform completely into anything you have consumed."

Thomas blinked. "What? Can it really do that?"

"Isn't that great, Thomas?" Olpi asked. "It can help you control yourself. Isn't that what you wanted?"

Thomas rolled himself towards the mask and its screws excitedly shook again. He hesitated. "What's the catch?"

Doevm let out a hollow laugh. "It will put a constant strain on your mind while in use. The more you change your body, the less there is of Thomas Virility. It's a dangerous learning curve. Even if you learn to manage that, there's still the risk of losing control if you sustain too much damage."

Thomas slowly rolled back to where he was and fell deep into thought.

Normally Doevm would have waited, but time was precious: "You can always decide later, but we must keep moving-"

"No, it's alright," Thomas said before snatching up the mask. "I'm just wondering if there's any other way for me to get stronger, like with Frey or Elero?"

Doevm shook his head. "Not with your body, not the same way they can at least. It is up to you whether to use the device or not. My only advice is to test it away from others."

"Are you going to be ok?" Olpi voiced her concern. "If you need some help, you can always come to me."

Thomas held the mask over to his chest with a smile just as wide as the mask's. "Thanks for worrying about me, but I'll be fine Olpi. I've been trying to control myself this entire time, so it's nothing new. Really, I'll be fine. Doevm, thank you for everything. Please tell Kilot thanks for making this for me." He hadn't missed the emblem of a hammer on the back: Kilot's mark.

"Remember to come back once a day for the rest of your gear," Doevm said.

Thomas nodded vigorously. "Of course! Alright, I'm going to go now. Good luck with your training. Bye!" He waddled his bulbous body out into the bright hallway, gingerly shut the door behind him, and they listened to his hurried footsteps fade into the ambient cackling of drunkards and Dwarven songs in the bar below them.

After a moment of silence, Olpi asked, "What about you, Doevm? What are you going to be doing?"

Doevm was still exhausted from the entire week's events, but he suppressed the urge to send her on her way. 'What will I be doing?' he thought to himself. 'I know I'm going to be busy planning, exploring, training, and setting traps, but that isn't going to be enough. Without magic, I can't take them on, but if I do use magic then Maker will come for me again. In the first place, that's not how I want to live anymore. Every time I use magic it hinders my development.'

"Doevm?" Olpi asked, breaking him out of his thoughts as his attention shifted back to her.

"That's it," Doevm suddenly exclaimed.

"W-what?" Olpi asked. "Why are you looking at me like that? I'm sorry, d-did I offend you?"

"It was simply a good question," Doevm explained. "I've been a little exhausted lately so I didn't consider something."

Olpi let out a sigh and sat on the bed next to Doevm. "Not to be rude, Doevm, but we could all tell," she said.

"You have?" Doevm asked. He hadn't even thought of checking his physical condition, yet another mistake in his thinking. It wasn't a rare occurrence when heavily sleep-deprived.

Olpi nodded. "I think that's why we all have been pushing ourselves, because we can't help but rely on you."

And here Doevm had thought Frey to be the most blunt of the group as he shrugged. "If that's true, I can't think it's because of a lack of effort."

"Regardless, it's frustrating," Olpi continued to be blunt. "I'm sorry if we feel like burdens to you, but I can't figure out a way to contribute besides just doing whatever you say. It makes me feel like shit."

Doevm was intrigued. "Why don't you normally talk like this?" he asked.

Olpi's long ears tilted downwards. "I should have, but I only realized it when I saw the look on Thomas's face as he turned away from you."

Doevm nodded, but it didn't change what he was about to say. "I'm going to be training you for the rest of the week."

Olpi tried to hide the pain in her expression as she nodded. "Thank you. I won't let you down. You should sleep now. We have a long week ahead of us."

Thomas couldn't rely on himself, so he relied on that enchanted mask. In the same vein, if Doevm couldn't rely on his own magic, he could simply rely on someone else's. Although Olpi's knowledge of magic couldn't even compare to Doevm's, if she were to learn a fraction of his spells, if she were to be the sole magician in the group, Doevm could finally focus on fighting.

It proved that Doevm was so worried about fighting the gods and soulmagic that he hadn't even considered such a simple solution. For the first time, he was seeing the strain on himself, what the group saw all along.

"That sounds like another good idea," Doevm said as he slowly leaned back into the bed. It was the softest bed that fourteen copper pieces a night could buy. That was to say, not soft at all, but anything would do in his state. The last thing he saw was Olpi's small back as she slowly walked to a chair to keep watch.

'One week left,' Doevm thought. 'It's going to be a lot of repetition and work, just to deal with the goddess's army. There's still one god unaccounted for, but I don't have the resources to worry about him. I can only hope that he'll act as a balance for the goddess.'