A cleric who doesn’t believe in the Divine.
A revenant with no memory of his past.
A blind elf who hates elves.

The following story was adapted from a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, the original tabletop roleplaying game enjoyed by nerds, bachelors, and the unemployed alike.

This is a work of fiction satire. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Especially if they resemble Richard Dawkins.

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His morning began with the scent of fresh logs crackling on the fire. He smiled. It reminded him of home. Sleeping in on holy days before his life in the seminary. Mother scrambling eggs and frying bacon. I bet the servants are preparing an exquisite elvish dish, he thought groggily.

Father Dawkins lifted his heavy eyelids. His window was open to a portrait of golden dawn. Something ruffled above him. An owl was perched on the headboard. And something that might’ve come from the owl stuck to his cheek. Confounded bird, he thought.

He sat up. And sniffed. Smoke?

Dawkins threw the covers off and staggered across the room. Removing the chair lodged beneath the lever, he turned the latch and pulled the door open.

A wall of smoke slammed into him.

“Fire!” he gagged, staggering up the hall. The rest of the rooms were empty. Did they leave me here to die? he thought morbidly. He turned for the stairs. But already, the tips of flames had had reached the top step. There was no way down.

Then something caught his eye. It was moving. Toward him. On five fingers.

A noise of surprise leaped out from Dawkins’s throat as he stumbled backward. The hand was on fire, running on fumes as it turned to ash. At last, it came to the cleric’s feet and felt his toes. Then it wrote on the floor with a black, melting finger: Remus.

The hand then curled up and was reduced to ash.

Dawkins could only stare. He knew it was Tulik. Or what was left of him. What could the soldier have possibly found in Remus? They were miles away from the capital. No time to lose, Dawkins thought, hurrying back into his bedroom. He was halfway out the window when he realized just how far down it was from the third floor.

As the flames barraged his door, Hoot Hoot gave a shriek and soared overhead, and Dawkins felt something wet hit the back of his neck. He grimaced as he watched it fly over the walls of the city, unscathed by the flames.

Crackling crept up behind Dawkins. With a frantic breath, he yanked the covers off the bed and began removing the sheets. He fastened one end to the bedpost and tied several knots along the way until he had a rope of elvish silk. With no time to reconsider, he jumped onto the windowsill.

His hands became so suddenly warm. He startled as fire slithered up the sheets, the bed having gone up in smoke. Dawkins cast the sheets down with a curse and turned to survey the street. It was littered with onlookers.

“Oi! A little help here!”

Elvish men and women gazed up at him as the house fell to ruin.

“Is that a cleric?” one of them said.

“Sure looks like it. Say, isn’t he that one from Meridies? There’s a poster with his face on it ’round here somewhere . . . ah, there’s one nailed to the side of the church there!”

The second Dawkins saw the piece of parchment waving in the air, he knew he was in trouble. Retracting his head into the room, he glanced around the few feet of space he had left. His eyes landed on a closet door. What he found behind it was less than ideal. But it would have to do.

A figure reappeared at the window, wearing a wrinkled blue dress and a pillow sheet over his—or her—hair. A creepily high voice escaped her lips. “Please! Somebody! Help me!”

At once, the elvish men leaped into action. Ladders that no one realized they owned propped up against the window all at once. There were so many that they competed for space along the window. As soon as one ladder touched the sill, another batted it away.

Dawkins was out of time. The tips of flames lashed out at his skirt. He latched onto the nearest ladder and kicked off from the room.

Unfortunate for him, the owner of the ladder had just received a scowl from his jealous wife. And it caused him to let go.

“AIGHHH!”

The cleric’s descent was a slow one. He balanced in the air for a moment, swayed one way, then the next, then plummeted downward. However, the extension of the ladder landed him safely in a fountain with an engraving on its side: Donated by the Ruyns.

Bubbles preceded Dawkins as he emerged from the water. Several hands offered themselves, but he struck the nearest one bitterly and climbed out on his own. He tore the pillow sheet off his head and shed the dress that hid his cassock and the iconic A that hung around his neck. Several gasps were heard.

“Why, it is the cleric from Meridies! What’s he doing in Austere?”

“He set the house on fire!”

“Hang the heretic!”

“No, no! You have me confused with someone else!” Dawkins replied.

“But you’re him!”

“No, I’m his twin brother!”

“Father Dawkins!” a friendlier though worried voice called out.

He lifted his eyes to see Roxane hurrying toward him, Killer Eyes at her side. Her two cousins and their mother stood behind her, holding each other and weeping.

“See, that’s his name!” one of the townsfolk shouted.

“Hang him!”

“No, no,” Dawkins said. “You’re thinking of Father Hitchens! I believe in the Church of the Divine and all its tenants.”

“But how do you explain the fire, then, huh!”

“Uh. Demons?”

            The townsfolks collectively paused, then grunted in acceptance.

Roxane reached Dawkins, breathless, splitting the angriest of the men around him. “Oh, Father . . . thank the Divine you’re alive . . . we tried to open your door, but it wouldn’t budge—we knocked and shouted, and . . . I’m sorry, but . . . I don’t think Tulik or Dolores made it out!”

Dawkins blinked. The world seemed to fade around him.

I finally get rid of that elf, and she takes my elixir with her.

“Damn that elf!”

“I’m sorry? Father?”

“Oh, it’s nothing. Just . . . damn that elf! For not surviving, you know?”

Dawkins stood beside Roxane, watching as the house collapsed one piece at a time, showering embers over the village. Killer Eyes whined. And when he did so, an unwarranted smile sprawled across Dawkins’s face.

All was not lost.

Minding his face, Dawkins turned to Roxane. “My dear lady, could you point me in the direction of the nearest cemetery?”

Roxane wore a look of shock.

“Assuming our friends have indeed perished in the flames, then it is my duty as a priest to offer my prayers for the dead.”

She nodded. “It’s on the west side of town, Father.”

“You have my thanks,” he said, turning. Then paused. “And do be a dear, and find if you can get me passage to Remus. I’m in a hurry.”

“Yes, Father, of course,” she said. Insensitive jerk, she thought.

With the rest of the town bustling about the fire, the graveyard was deserted except for those who resided there permanently. Dawkins surveyed the headstones, counting the non-elvish names.

Of course there aren’t any, he thought, immediately heading for the city gate. They bury their non-elvish folk outside the walls. And the half-elves get buried beneath the walls—I have that much to look forward to.

“You know, I thought I recognized you,” the guard at the gate said. “Just want you to know I agree with your arguments, about the Divine and all that.”

“Splendid,” Dawkins said with little less than a mutter. He had no time to preach. On a rocky hillside south of town, he found it. A few slabs of stone with hardly a name scratched on their rigid surfaces. “Humans,” he said with a nod. “It will be one of these.”

As the smoke faded into the horizon, Dawkins sat on a headstone, counting the seconds until the turn of the next hour. It would take an entire day at least, but he wasn’t about to let his elixir walk off on him. Not after all he’d been through.

The revenant will return. He always will until his mission is accomplished, he thought with a sly grin. The she-elf, on the other hand, will not.

Then he frowned. That elf . . .

“If you are real,” he muttered to the Divine, “you’ve got a poor taste in humor.”

Come early signs of dusk, Killer Eyes approached Dawkins, followed by Roxane.

“Father? Are you okay?”

He stirred. Must’ve dozed off. The graves remained intact.

“The servants prepared a horse for your journey to Remus. Must you go so soon?”

He fixed his eyes on the sun. “In exactly ten hours, three minutes, and twenty-seven seconds,” he said, rising. Roxane looked even more confused. “My apologies, my dear woman. I know this has been a trying time for you. First the manor. And now this.”

Roxane looked down and nodded. “I’ll just have to manage. It’s what Dolores would say.”

As long as you include killing elves somewhere in there, Dawkins thought.

“We’re staying with another family in town. Will you join us, Father?”

Dawkins shook his head. “I shall camp here for the night. A priestly vocation offers little time for rest and comfort. Go, my dear. I’ll be fine.”

Roxane nodded and returned to town with Tulik’s hound glued to her side.

Dawkins sat on the ground, back against a headstone. The hour grew late. He would stay ever vigilant and keep watch. Like his life depended on it.

He awoke at dawn’s early light. Startled, he scrambled to his feet, scanning the graves. Still nothing. It had been a day, hadn’t it?

Remus, he thought. That was the message he was given. With Tulik’s dying . . . well, not breath . . . scratch, maybe? Whatever it was, his last and only word was Remus.

Then that’s where I shall go, Dawkins decided. Hurrying back to town, rubbing a sore, old back, he bid Roxane good morning and bade her farewell as he climbed into the saddle of a white steed and kicked off toward the northern capital. He’d follow the same path they had taken to reach Austere, pass through Collisep, and cross the Southern Moors before reaching his new destination.

Hours along the way, hooves tossing clouds of dirt in his impatient wake, a stone henge appeared on the side of the road. He had seen it previously with little intrigue. Dwarves were a religious folk like the elves, but they worshipped many gods instead of one. Each stone represented some deity to which one characteristic or attribute belonged. Elves at least consolidated their gods into one, making it easier to dismiss gods altogether, or so he liked to think.

Dawkins slowed his horse to a trot. Perhaps this would be a good place to spend the night. A safe place, anyway. Bandits steered clear of graveyards. They were silly enough to believe in ghosts. Not Dawkins. He only believed in reason. Well, and revenants.

Building a fire and nibbling on a piece of salted coney a servant had packed in his saddlebag, Dawkins leaned against one of the mighty stones, his eyes tracing the Dragonborn Constellation on the night sky’s rim. He ignored the dull, hollow sound when he first heard it. But when even the horse snorted in alarm, he jumped to his feet and raised his heathen hammer high.

A boulder had rolled away from the mouth of a tomb. And out stepped a stocky figure with an iron helmet in one hand and an ax in the other. Dwarves were buried combat ready in the event their gods sent them to the wrong place.

One wobbly step followed another, and the corpse of a dwarf made its way toward the fire.

Dawkins nodded, sweat on his face. He had forgotten that zombies were real too.

When the undead dwarf got within ten feet, the moon painting its face white, Dawkins rushed forward with a battle cry.

“Wait! Father—stop!”

Dawkins screeched to a halt. Father? He gasped. Could it be?

“It’s me! Tulik.”

Dawkins stared down at the resurrected dwarf. Then he lowered his hammer. “My apologies, friend. I expected you’d have picked a, eh . . . taller vessel upon your return.”

Tulik scowled. “I’m not short! I’m just . . . dwarfish. Say, where’s Killer Eyes?”

“It likes Roxane better.”

“Oh,” Tulik said with a half-sad face. “It’s probably for the best.”

Dawkins watched as Tulik tugged on the beard that hung to his toes. He scooted closer to the fire and eyed the coney hungrily.

Dawkins sighed. “Help yourself.”

Tulik leaned over the cooking pot and snatched up the morsel. But as he made his retreat, his beard snagged on the logs. “Oh, not good, not good! Father!”

Dawkins seized a tankard and threw it at Tulik’s beard. He forgot it was tiefling tequila.

“No! Not again!” Tulik cried, his beard a burning bush.

Dawkins dug into his pack and found a spare knife. He stood over Tulik, gripped the beard as close to the chin as possible, and sawed the hairs off just as the flames pricked his hand.

“Whew! That was close,” Tulik said, sitting up. “So, how does it look?”

Dawkins glanced at the unevenly cropped hair that stuck out from Tulik’s face. “It suits you well.” He concealed a smirk. Then almost fell over and thanked the stars—which was totally different than thanking the Divine. He had almost lost Tulik again, and so soon. It was as if the Divine was real and was trying to steal away his elixir. Scared? Dawkins smirked at the heavens.

He turned to Tulik, sitting down. “Tell me. What’s in Remus?”

Tulik played with his ax. “Remember Lord Ruyn? Turns out he was working for the Alchemist, this guy who flies around on a chair. He was in the house, talking to him after we went to bed. He controls all these elven lords out here, and he’s trying to be immortal—the Divine.”

Dawkins pretended not to be startled.

“You never told me what that journal said. Back in the Silvian Manor.”

Dawkins felt the firelight hit his face. “It was written in elvish, and I’ve grown rusty in the True Tongue.”

Tulik nodded without a word more. Within the hour, Dawkins dozed off, and Tulik sat still as he contemplated how he would get on that horse come morning. As the campfire turned to embers and darkness fell, a hoot owl sung its song in the distance. And with it, a voice hissed.

“I got them. I got them all! Except Father Dawkins. He’s the last one. The last elf!”

Come morning, Dawkins awoke to find Tulik hanging onto the side of the horse’s saddle as the animal spun in an uncomfortable circle. With a sigh, Dawkins grabbed Tulik—“Hey, put me down!”—and threw him on the rump, then climbed up himself. Together, they rode for Remus.

Hours passed as the horse galloped through the Moors. This was the longest stretch of the journey, and hordes were a concern for anyone who didn’t have enough time to go around them.

Just the sight of the capital excited Tulik, with its stone towers and marble spires. He wasn’t one for the city, but this was certainly the exception.

Security was even tighter in Remus than Austere, as the plague had yet to make its way north, and the lords sought to keep it that way. As usual, Father Dawkins’s cassock gave him passing privileges. Guards nodded in respect, though some furrowed a brow at the symbol of his newfound order—and the short creature riding behind him.

“We don’t see many a halfling in Remus,” a guard noted.

“I’m not a halfling, I’m a dwarf!” Tulik protested.

“Hah! Can’t fool me. Not with those muttonchops.”

“So, where is he? This Alchemist?” Dawkins asked as he slowed the horse. Its hooves made a hollow sound as they crossed a brick-and-mortar bridge over the city’s wide moat.

Tulik shook his head. “I’m not sure. But I’d recognize him if I saw him. Like I said, he flies around on a chair. Oh, and he wears this ivory robe with a whole ton of symbols on it.”

Symbols? Dawkins shivered. “You failed to mention that last detail previously.”

“Yeah, kind of like you and that journal.”

But Dawkins didn’t hear him. If even the elven lords feared this Alchemist character, then he was no simple lord himself. So, what was he, then? An imperial descendant? The empire had fallen half a millennium ago, and the lords acted as kings, financing the mercenary militias that protected the towns. It was a feudal system that kept the top on top and the bottom where they belonged. The only escape for the common man was the route Dawkins had taken. The priesthood.

And he was far from the only one.

“What kind of symbols?” Dawkins asked.

“I don’t know. Stars, moons, triangles?”

Dawkins squeezed the reins. The priesthood was a path in between the rich and the poor. It was a roadmap to something better than nothing. And along the way, he and this Alchemist saw through the same tricks but admired the ideas behind them.

In particular, the ability to live forever.

“Yah!” He whipped the horse, and Tulik almost rolled off the back.

“What gives?” Tulik asked.

Dawkins leaned forward. “I’ve a hunch where he is . . . and who.”

Alchemy, he thought. It was best described as magic in an evolved form. It was too powerful to be replicated, too powerful to be science. He had only a scrambling of spells he had picked up in the seminary. It would take a lifetime to master all the schools of magic. But alchemy was different. One didn’t choose alchemy. Alchemy chose you. And it happened in an instant.

“Church?” Tulik asked as the horse came to a stop. He eyed the spires.

Dawkins shook his head. “The seminary. The same one I attended many moons ago.”

Tying the horse outside, they entered the dim structure. Stained-glass windows painted corridors red and green as they made their way to the seminarian quarters.

“Father, I really don’t know what we’re doing—”

“Just wait!” Dawkins snapped. At last, they came to a dorm room. It was locked. “Still remember how to do that one thing?”

Tulik nodded and stepped up to the door. Luckily, the dwarf body he utilized must have belonged to a rogue like himself, as it had a lockpick readily available. The only difference this time is Tulik didn’t need to get on his knees. “Got it!”

The door swung open, and Dawkins hurried in, shutting it behind Tulik. He then approached a wall that bore carvings of stars, half-moons, and pyramids of many sorts.

“The man in the chair,” Dawkins pointed, “did those symbols on his robe look anything like these?”

Tulik’s eyes widened. “Exactly like them! How did you know?”

As if Tulik had spoken the words of a spell, Dawkins grew suddenly pale and leaned against the wall.

“Father? What’s going on? You’re leaving me in the dark here.”

Dawkins concentrated on his breathing, then looked up—or down—at Tulik. “The Alchemist was a seminarian. We shared this very room. The sacred texts taught us to become as close to the Divine as we can, to copy him to the letter. In deed and virtue, of course. Not in anything else.”

Tulik folded his arms, listening.

“He was the first to ask the question, and to his detriment, he asked it during one of the classes on divinology. ‘Why be like the Divine when we can be the Divine?’ He was laughed at, scorned. ‘Preposterous!’ said the teacher. ‘Heresy!’ later declared the principal. He had been dabbling with alchemy on the side, and it was soon revealed. In fact, I am the one responsible for exposing his sins to the Church.”

Tulik’s face was a cloud of thoughts. “Wow. That was quite the sacrifice, Father. Standing up to a friend like that when he was wrong. We need more people like you in this world.”

Dawkins glanced aside. He was going to continue his tale. He was going to explain that the only reason he ratted on his fellow seminarian was to eliminate competition. But somehow, his old accomplice had gotten to the top without need for the Church. Alchemy had truly given him it all.

All this time, I thought I was winning the race, Dawkins thought, his heart sinking. He had this figured out all by the use of a little magic . . . all the while I’ve been running myself into the ground with prayers, liturgies, and chasing this stupid cadaver. He had been working wonders underground while I’ve been grasping at straws as a village priest.

“So, any ideas where your old roommate is now?” Tulik asked. “Not that I’m getting impatient or anything. But Lord Ruyn said he was going to do something terrible.”

Dawkins kept a straight face. He neither nodded nor shook his head. He had plans of his own. The revenant option may be a dead end. But it wasn’t entirely a waste. As if there actually was the Divine, the misfortunes of his journey had still led him down the path of immortality. He’d just taken a detour, that’s all. He would still find the elixir. He would still become a god.

“Father?”

He removed his hand from the wall. “There’s a place we used to frequent after our studies. It was a haven for our rather . . . unorthodox discussions.”

“Good. Which room?”

“It’s not here. It’s in the sewers.”

Tulik frowned. Figures, he thought.

Cracking open the door to make sure the coast was clear, they slipped into the corridor and headed back the way they came. A couple clerics passed them up, and one nudged the other. “I always knew we’d have a halfling seminarian one day!”

“No, I’m a dwarf!” Tulik cried.

Outside the seminary, Dawkins led the horse by foot. “We’ll need to find this animal a home. If the guards catch us leaving the surface, it’s jailtime.”

Tulik nodded and pointed out an inn near one of the city gates. In the event they didn’t return, the horse would be confiscated by the owner as abandoned property.

Walking away from the inn, they approached a round grate that was used for drainage. When Dawkins’s half-elvish eyes determined they weren’t being watched, Tulik picked the lock, and they were beneath the city in no time.

But Dawkins’s eyes weren’t what they used to be. He needed glasses, and that was overdue. For they were being watched. Not by the city guards. Not by the beggars in the shadows. Not even by a pair of eyes. But by someone with an owl on her shoulder and purpose written on her heart.

“Dawkins-elf!” she hissed.

The drainage part of the sewers smelled the best, and it was horrible. As the tunnels led on—Dawkins relying on his fiat lux spell to illuminate what he saw and Tulik tripping over, well, he didn’t want to know what—familiarity began to flow through the cleric’s veins.

A turn of the corner. A duck under a pipe or two. And a solid gray wall.

Tulik glanced up at Dawkins. “Wrong turn?”

“No. Just trying to remember.” He leaned forward with a grim look. He then placed his hand against the cool, moist wall and uttered the secret password that not a soul in all Tristana would ever guess: “Aperta sesamae.”

At once, the wall slid aside, and a dimly lit chamber awaited them.

Exchanging a nervous glance, they entered. Then the wall slid shut behind them.

Tulik squinted in the dark. In the center of the room was a pedestal, and resting upon it was a dull red stone. “What is it?” he asked.

Dawkins didn’t even fight for the words. He knew he wouldn’t win. His mouth trembled as he stepped closer to the object. Could it be . . . ?

“I wouldn’t go about touching things you know nothing about,” a voice said. At once, Tulik gripped his ax. Something floated out of the shadows. It sat on a gold chair and wore an ivory robe with gold symbols.

Dawkins squeezed his war hammer so hard he felt his knuckles crack. “Hawking,” he said.

“Welcome back, old friend.”

They watched as Hawking removed his hood, revealing a face with pale skin stretched so thin that his skull was showing through. His elvish ears were the pointiest Tulik had ever seen.

“I hope my appearances do not disturb you,” Hawking said. Or at least the voice came from him. His mouth did not move as he spoke. “Seeking the forbidden has taken its toll. As I am sure you have discovered in your own way, Father Dawkins.”

Dawkins felt the need to spit.

“You’re dying to know what this is, I presume,” Hawking said as he circled the pedestal.

“I already know what it is. A philosopher’s stone. And you’ve placed it beneath the heart of the largest city in the region.”

Tulik glanced back and forth between the two. “What’s a philosopher’s stone, and why’s that important it’s under Remus?”

Dawkins grimaced. “He will use the stone to absorb the souls of all who dwell above us. And the one who possesses it will be granted all the days allotted to those souls.”

Hawking grinned. “You’ve been studying. And more than divinology. I’m impressed. But tell me, why the priest charade? Was it really the road less traveled by?”

“To become the Divine, you must learn him,” Dawkins replied.

“Except the Divine doesn’t exist, so you’ve wasted your time—an entire lifetime, to be exact. And who’s this dead halfling by your side?”

“I’m a dwarf!” Tulik barked.

“He’s a member of the Ex Cavare,” Dawkins told willingly. “He’s been hunting the traitors you planted within their ranks.”

Tulik fell silent. He remembered the last words of Raynor Sanguine. How the elven lord gloated about the infiltration. How he was about to say who he worked for. And how Father Dawkins crushed his skull before he could get it out.

“You’ve been connecting the dots. Again, I’m impressed. For a half-elf,” Hawking said. “Transmutation has made advances that leave divinology behind in another age. The stone can only be filled once, and I’ll need as many souls as possible to prolong my life. What better way to keep the region all in one place but a world riddled by plagues, empty graves, and demons from the abyss? Of course, the Ex Cavare caught on. But I’ve taken care of that.”

Dawkins pivoted on his feet. “You really plan to go through with this? To turn the capital into a ghost town?” His next words surprised even himself. “Are their days truly yours for the taking?”

Hawking snorted. “Don’t feign these Austere virtues. Consider, for example, that by just talking to me, you are stealing seconds if not minutes from my own life.”

Dawkins remained silent. Hawking always was the master of timeology. Dawkins, on the other hand, had always come second place. Until he got him expelled.

“I knew it was you,” Hawking said, and Dawkins braced for the guilt wave that struck him. “Who else knew what those symbols meant? Granted, etching them on that wall wasn’t the greatest of my accomplishments, but it’s all part of the human experiment. But to know that a kindred spirit set me up, well, I must say that I had thought better of you, Father.”

Dawkins grunted, wringing the stem of his hammer.

“What’s this, now? You wish to brawl? Hm. I suppose there are reasons that would compel you to do so. Let’s see. You either care about the people upstairs, which we both know you don’t, or it must be that you’ve failed to acquire eternal life on your own and have come to take it from me. Am I correct?”

Tulik’s hackles went up. Of course not! he told himself. But when he looked over at Dawkins, he saw the truth dripping from his face. “Father?”

Dawkins stirred, then shook his head. “We have come . . . to make you pay for your crimes against mankind and against elfdom!”

Tulik sighed with relief. “And dwarfdom too!” He positioned his stubby little legs in a sprinting position.

Hawking just laughed. “How noble. Well, don’t stand about. Let’s get this affair over with so I can go about my business.”

Dawkins looked at Tulik, and Tulik looked at him. Then with a shared nod, they charged forth, arching their weapons to strike.

It happened so fast. Hawking, calmly seated on his flying chair, raised his hands. Both Dawkins and Tulik were launched backward, spines slamming against the wall, thin fissures slithering across the stone. They were pinned, unable to make the slightest wiggle.

“And it’s over. As simple as that,” Hawking said. His chair hovered closer between his opponents, rotating so he could face the dormant stone in the center of the room.

Tulik moaned. He felt like he had fallen from a tower. His helmet had flown off when he was airborne. “Father, you used to room with this guy? Ugh!”

Dawkins said nothing. His head hung in defeat. He wasn’t a wizard. He knew little of the magic art. But of the few wizards he did know, nothing of this sort was so easily performed. An invisible hand held them to the wall with little effort. Like the hand of the Divine.

Hawking fixed his eyes on the stone. “And now you shall witness the birth of a god!”

Dawkins’s own eyes widened. He’d like to see it. Even if it wasn’t him. Even if Hawking won, at least it would prove the Divine was little more than a self-made deity, if even that.

Hawking raised his hands even higher. “Venite ad me, omnes spiritus sancti!”

At the end of those words, the earth quaked. The walls buckled beneath Dawkins and Tulik. Chips rained down throughout the chamber like a hailstorm. The stone on the pedestal began to glow blood red. Blindingly so.

“Ego sum deus, ego sum deus, ego sum deus!”

The chamber roared like a furnace, burning brighter than the sun. Tulik shut his eyes, left to imagine the horrible fates of all the people standing above them. I’m sorry! he thought. I tried!

Dawkins kept his eyes open, the rays of divinity searing into his mind. “Thus, it was so,” he muttered as if dictating a book, “that the power of the Divine should be granted to an elf.”

That word floated in the air for a silent moment. Then echoed back in a hissing voice.

“ELF!”

Her shriek resounded throughout the chamber, growing louder with every bounce off the trembling walls. Dolores soared through the air, carried by her owl. The chair spiraled across the floor, one of its legs cracked, and its occupant writhing on his side. She had him by the ears.

“This is the biggest, elvishest elf I’ve found yet!” she said.

“No!” he gasped, unable to aim his spells at her. He reached behind him, his fingers hooking her blindfold. “I must complete the charm! I must! If I don’t, it’ll—”

Hawking was cut off. The stone shot a single red beam at him, illuminating his body like a fire inside a ruby. Then he was gone, his clothes lying flat beneath Dolores.

Then everything stopped. The light faded. The rumbling ceased. A small dot of red floated within the stone like a firefly caught in a bottle.

Dawkins and Tulik fell from the walls. They gasped and coughed as they crawled. Dolores sat on her knees, clawing at the ivory robe.

“Where’d he go! I wanted those ears! I was going to put them next to the others I have hanging around my neck!”

Then her own ears twitched. She spun around, baring teeth. Her colorless eyes scanned the darkness that confronted her.

Before Dawkins could climb to his feet, the creature was on top him, poking and twisting his semi-pointed ears. Then he felt her sharp teeth meet his flesh.

“Wait—no, no!”

Dolores released at once, spitting. She fell off his back and hopped away, wiping her tongue on her dirty hands.

“Yuck!” she exclaimed. “Dawkins no elf! . . . Dawkins half-elf! Your ears taste like something they fed me in the Ex Cavare! Now, what am I supposed to do with a half-elf . . .?”

Dawkins caressed his slightly bitten ear, muttering a litany of obscenities. Tulik rose to his stocky legs beside him. And together, they glimpsed into the philosopher’s stone.

“What do we do with it?” Tulik asked in a dead voice.

“I know!” Dolores butted in between them. “Let’s use it on all the elves! Oh, and I decided we can use it on half-elves if their ears are longer than four inches.”

Tulik kept his gaze fixed on the stone. “Father?”

Dawkins breathed. It was a stiff breath. The answer to all the riddles was standing right before him. The real elixir to immortality.

I found you at last.

“Father.”

No response.

“Let’s destroy it,” Tulik said. He looked for his ax but found its blade had broken off its handle, lying on the floor. “Father, you with me?”

Dawkins was silent. A strange, twisted smile clung to his face. It is mine, isn’t it? All this work, all this toil . . . it’s mine to do as I please. So, what shall I do with it?

“Father, what are you—”

“Stand there!” Dawkins said as he dropped the stone at Tulik’s feet.

“Father, I don’t feel comfortable with—”

Dawkins’s hammer came down. The stone shattered into a million pieces. A wisp of red flowed out from within—the spirit of Hawking—and traveled up Tulik’s pudgy nostrils. His veins glowed like fire, then simmered down. Color returned to his gray dwarfish face, and in an instant, he could feel his heart begin to beat.

Dawkins laughed. Not like a cynical old cleric. But like a child young enough to play.

“What just happened!” Tulik gasped.

“The stone has cured you of your revenancy,” Dawkins said proudly.

“Really? So, I’m cured? I won’t die again once I finish my task?”

Dawkins shook his head. “Of this, I am certain. Healing is the priest’s department, after all.” He wiped his forehead, turning aside for the moment. In one strike, he had thrown away both of his only leads to immortality. Was it worth it? he wondered. His jaw tightened. Yes.

Tulik felt the life returning to him. Both in body and spirit. He looked at his hands which had the appearance of normal flesh, though the dwarfish skin was as rough as hide. And best of all, he remembered. Everything. His childhood on the streets. His involvement in the thieves guild. And every detail on his contract with the Ex Cavare.

“Wait! Tulio was a zombie?” Dolores asked. She frowned. “What am I supposed to do with elves that are already dead . . . ? Hey, how long are your ears!” She swiped in the direction of Tulik’s voice but failed to find him. Then she reached down, a look of surprise swarming her face as she patted the bald head of a rather vertically challenged creature. “Oh! You’re not an elf either. Why, it’s been ages since I’ve met a halfling!”

“I’M A DWARF!”

Dawkins didn’t suppress his smirk this time. He was happy. How could he not be? He was freed from the ambitions that had dictated his life since the wane of his childhood. An encounter with success was all he needed to see that failure was the better option. How could he live with himself forever, knowing that everyone else was dead because of him?

“Well, where to next, Father?” Tulik asked. Dolores patted Hoot Hoot, who landed on her shoulder and hummed softly.

Dawkins rubbed his hammer. “You may not be a revenant anymore, but you’ve still a task to complete, do you not? There are still traitors in the Ex Cavare. And I suppose it’s up to us to stop them.”

Tulik nodded. “Sounds like a plan!”

Dolores grinned from pointed ear to pointed ear. “Let’s slaughter those good-for-nothing elves!” She marched onward with a skip in her step. “Hoot Hoot? Tell the others we’re going to war!”

Hoot?

“All the other owls.”

Hoot?

“The ones you recruited.”

Hoot . . .

“All of them? Sanctus cacas! I’ll pluck every last one of those deserters!”

Dawkins and Tulik followed from a safe distance behind.

“Say, Father?” Tulik asked. “When do I get my old body back?”

Dawkins was struck dumbfounded. “Come again?”

“You know. My human body. Now that I’m not dead, when does one that come back?”

Dawkins bit his tongue. “I’m afraid that your . . . old body was cremated in the housefire.” He felt suddenly terrible for locking Tulik in such a shorter form. But Tulik simply shook his head.

“No, I think there’s still a part of my original body out there. I mean, I can still feel one of my old fingers. It hurts really bad every now and then too. Ow! Like right now.”

Dawkins arched an eyebrow. “I’m not sure that’s possible . . .” Ahead, the voice of Dolores mumbled in the shadows. “Mm! This finger is delicious.”

The End

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Special thanks to Dom (Tulik), Austin (Dolores), and Tom (Dungeon Master).