[RP] The Birds and The Eternal Night

author: me
translator: Orzie
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Once upon a morning...
Well, can we speak about "morning" in a room where no sunlight comes, such as Agar's laboratory? It would be possible to orient on the time when you wake up if you hadn't been asleep for several days and just took a nap over the flasks you were working with. Ah, it doesn't matter much.
Here comes the overgrown, disheveled, and actually crazy owner of the lab. Today Agar decided to have breakfast, or maybe dinner, and opened the basement store room. Empty. He vaguely remembered that it was like that in the previous time as well, except the sentient mold - but now even the mold seemed to be gone.

Agar didn't have a good relationship with the Light magic with its popular tricks concerning food preparation. Well, the food was created undoubtedly, but even the minions didn't seem to be inspired to taste it - the minotaurs didn't give attention to such a trifle, the birds were strangely squeamish, and the beholders just got late - a troglodyte sat over it, and seemed to think he did the right thing.

Agar even turned upset of the fact that he has never created a creature which he would be able to send to the nearest tavern for some food supply, and it would be able to bring the required instead of anything else it encountered on the way and be talked to without any risk to get eaten or killed. What an imperfect world! He should think about it... during a travel from one laboratory to another, maybe. However, that time seems to be already busy for a month in advance. For now, Agar desperately wanted to FRESS... to a degree when even beholders begin to seem appetizing.

Anyway, looks like he saw a curious book nearby - of course, not that interesting to stop sewing on tentacles to everything possible, but this time that book would come in handy. It was sent by Corlagon and commended a lot by him in the accompanying letter - well, not a surprise; perhaps that was his first book ever. Albeit, it's barely so - it's the Ritual of the Eternal Night, perhaps he just liked the title. Regardless, Corlagon wrote that he felt a lot better after reading it. A damn junkie... oh, necromancer.* After the total ban of the Necromancers Guild they converse using some incomprehensible encryptions all along - maybe he had... something other in mind.

Agar meditatively leaved through the book, mechanically gathering and placing around everything necessary. He was very hungry, and to distract himself from the oppressing and too much human feeling, he started to draw ritual patterns on the floor. As ill luck would have it, he also wanted to take a bath, but when the Ritual began, he was happy that he didn't eat. After a short time he was happy that he didn't take a bath until he completely lost a desire to eat, wash or be happy.

In other aspects, nothing has changed at all. Agar could now close the Ritual book, place it again under a lame table leg to make it stable, and return to work. He was a bit sad that he didn't visit the tavern - now, with him being a Lich, he will never get pleasure from drinking; well, it was just a residual effect which went away quickly.

Agar never figured out that Corlagon didn't send him the actual Ritual of the Eternal Night. Corlagon never knew that Agar was successful in becoming a Lich despite of that small revenge. The Heroes of Enroth never discovered that they were met by some other lich and entirely not Agar, and they killed him and left with a clear conscience. Agar was never aware what happens behind the laboratory doors starting from that day, neither he did knew about the Reckoning. There was only an eternal, eternal night left, with Agar and the birds. Incidentally, even now they are somewhere.


Notes from translator:
* A word game barely able to be translated properly due to vocabulary difference. In Russian the words "Junkie" (Наркоман) and "Necromancer" (Некромант) resemble each other in sound and spelling. In this story the "Junkie" ("damn junkie") epithet for Corlagon is represented by a slang word describing a person writing senseless stuff with an allusion to a drug abuse.