Lith hadn't seen Kalla during the last three years, they just talked from time to time when her communication amulet appeared online. Lith understood how difficult the process of safely splitting one's core was and he thought that endangering his friend's life just for a social visit was beyond idiotic.
Once he reached the White Griffon, Lith asked the Headmaster to have his teacher ring back. He didn't have the time to fly around the forest searching for Kalla.
Albeit short, his meeting with Marth provided him some vital information.
"I never met Kalla the Wight after Balkor's attack. I honestly believed she had died by the hand of a Valor." Marth replied when Lith asked him about Kalla's whereabouts.
"I would love to contact Scarlett, but she left the White Griffon for good. We have a new Lord of the Forest, Sentar the Thunderbird."
'That's why Kalla needed my help.' Lith thought. 'With Scarlett gone, there is no elder Awakened one that could cure her. Light magic it's one of the hardest elements to master.'
Sentar had conflicting feelings about both Kalla and Lith. The former she considered an undead, which made Sentar reluctant to even stand in her presence. The latter had the stigma of Scarlett considering him a possible threat.
Yet Sentar remembered how her former leader had considered Kalla a close friend, as well as how much M'Rook and Protector liked Lith. She brought him to the Wight's quarters without asking questions.
When Kalla had mentioned a lair, Lith's mind had pictured some sort of natural network of caves, maybe a dungeon. A place riddled with corpses and undead, respectively the failures and successes of her research.
The entrance was an arch made of stone that led to an underground passage. It was the only part Lith had imagined right.
The moment he stepped inside, he thought to have entered a penthouse back on Earth. The room looked like an antechamber realized to allow Evolved Monsters to move without having to shapeshift.
Everything was oversized, from the corridors leading to the other rooms to the over four meters (13') high ceiling. The floor was smooth, with no imperfection nor stain visible.
'This isn't a natural cave at all. Someone carved everything out with earth magic.' Lith thought in surprise.
"Thank the gods you're here!" A giant mass of brown fur charged at Lith like a truck. Lith wasn't scared, he had recognized Nok's voice. The moment the Byk hit him, Lith realized how wrong he was.
Even with Nok's momentum, the impact was too weak. The fur was full of white streaks and now that they were close enough, Lith noticed several bald spots.
"Follow me." Nok bit Lith's left sleeve, tugging him forward without even waiting for a reply.
Lith exploited that contact to use Invigoration. Nok was now an adult Byk. His huge build was proof he had at least inherited his mother's physical strength and of how well fed he had been.
'What the heck has happened to him? I can't find any trace of disease or injury on Nok, yet his life force is as weak as when he was just a cub. Did he suffer from Kalla's experiments too or what?' Lith thought.
They passed through a series of rooms. Each one was bigger than Lith's house and filled with state of the art equipment for all kinds of magical research. There wasn't a single inch in any room that wasn't filled with books or magical protections to prevent a failed experiment from causing a cave in.
The Alchemy and Forgemaster labs almost made Lith turn green with envy.
'Where did Kalla find the money to afford all of this stuff? I thought she was interested in Necromancy, not crafting arts.' Solus jotted down everything they had seen, hoping to recreate most of the machinery once she reverted to her tower form.
Some devices were an improved version of what she was used to seeing in the White Griffon's departments.
When they reached their destination, Lith had no doubt it was a Necromancer's lab. Several glass tubes were lined up against the walls. Each one held a corpse floating into a translucent preserving liquid.
The floor and the ceiling were covered with magic circles similar to those Lith had found during his own research about souls in the army database. They had been carved in the stone with darkness magic. Their purpose was to prevent the mystical energies from dispersing.
In a way, Necromancy was similar to Forgemastering. Creating higher undead required a lot of mana and each corpse could only be used once. The magic circles increased the odds of success by saturating the atmosphere of darkness energy, making it easier for it to condense into a stable blood core.
Kalla lied in the middle of one of the oddest circles Lith had ever seen. Her body was lying still on the floor with most of her bones and muscles exposed. Her Evolved Monster form was partially undead, so she had no need to breathe.
The small shroud of darkness that covered part of her skull and abdomen proved she was still alive. Lith rushed to Kalla's side, noticing that one of her eye sockets was empty.
Only the one still covered by the darkness was lit by the red light of undeath.
"So you managed to arrive on time." Kalla noticed Lith's presence thanks to his smell. She was running on fumes. The sight was the first thing she had lost days ago.
"Don't talk. Save your strength and let me see if there's something I can do." Lith used Invigoration on her and discovered an unsettling anomaly. Just like Nok, her body was fit as a fiddle, yet her life force was fading away as they spoke.
"I stand corrected. Tell me what happened here, otherwise you'll die healthy."
"There's not much to say." Kalla replied. "I had reached the final steps of my research. My body is now able to withstand massive amounts of darkness energy without being destroyed and my mana core has been freed from its cage.
"All that was left was to split it into two perfect half and store one into a magic crystal I prepared beforehand. It took me months to adjust its wavelength to match the one of my core. The trickiest part was…"
"What happened?" Lith cut her short.
"The splitting of the mana core was a complete success. Alas, the removing part couldn't have gone worse. I underestimated the task and paid the price. I believed that becoming a Lich was just like any other greater Necromancy spell.
"The magic circles I prepared are perfect to contain darkness magic, but are otherwise useless. The moment I brought one of the two new cores outside my body, it disappeared like smoke, leaving behind only its darkness component.
"It forcefully attempted to fuse back with the remaining half of my mana core, but it was already in a critical condition. To trigger the split, I exposed both my body and core to tremendous stress. The sudden imbalance almost killed me.
"From that moment, I grew weaker by the day. I tried all the light spells I know to no avail."
