A Pack of Doggos?

Angus didn’t react at first; he froze like a statue rimed in dawn frost. He didn’t believe a pack of doggos could hurt him.

Then the husky before him swelled like a storm cloud. In seconds, a dog the size of a grown bull stood there.

Angus still stared, mind blank as winter glass. The dog slapped him, and he went flying like a kicked tin can.

As he shot through the house, the wind whooshed past like knives. Midair, his thoughts snapped awake.

Dammit—I got jumped by a dog! The realization seared like a brand.

He slipped his body into shadow, floating like a pale ghost. He raised his will, ready to blast those brats and the house to cinders like wildfire.

Then he saw them, and his gut clenched like a fist. Dogs, not just dogs—cats, squirrels, ducks—a whole menagerie ringed him like a chittering tide.

What the hell is this? Mutts and strays daring to strike me? I’m a Lich, he seethed, pride rising like black smoke.

A Lich who nearly brushed godhood, he told himself, spine hard as iron. By rights, no dog or cat should scratch him.

Yet when that jumble of beasts lunged, a cold bell tolled in his soul. That alarm only rang when death reached for him like winter.

Now, in the Underground, only a handful could truly threaten him. And only if they held artifacts that pierced space and stabbed at essence like spears of light.

On reflex, Angus raised a temporary ward that shimmered like glass. The animals’ blows rattled it like hail, but couldn’t crack it.

Their racket rolled across the village like thunder, and grown-ups stirred. For a few stolen seconds, the beasts held him like weeds snaring an ankle.

Villagers ringed in, hoes and cleavers glinting like moonlit teeth. A chill ran him through; those tools felt wrong, heavy as omens.

In any age—old surface or Underground—those were top-tier magitech implements, gleaming like stars. That thought crawled like ants.

Why would common folk grip artifacts like that? Doubt prickled like thorns.

He finally studied the villagers, and the sight hit like a hammer. The white-haired elder in front radiated pressure like a mountain wind.

Angus swallowed, throat dry as dust. That old man’s strength was not beneath his, not by much.

A tiny village, and this caliber shows up? Fate’s net never let him go, like a river hook in stubborn flesh.

Worse, what he’d waved off as rabble now throbbed with power like banked coals. Not his equal, but not far off.

Is this an ambush? The thought coiled like a snake.

It was the only story that fit, he decided, heart tight as a drum. If his luck was that rotten—walking into a cluster of elites…

“Eh? It’s that skeleton?” A burly man hefted a sledge, the head dull as storm iron. His voice rolled like gravel.

“Caught that sneaky bag of bones before. Didn’t look decent. And he dares make trouble in our village?”

Truth was, they’d seen Angus the moment he slipped in, shadows clinging like fog. In these days, angels even cruised the sky like swans.

One more skeleton was old hat, a crow on a fence. So they’d let him pass—until he kicked the anthill.

Angus eyed the shrinking ring like a closing jaw. He weighed it, and judged the village chief a fifty-fifty fight.

But at the chief’s side stood several more, each a half-step lower. Together, they loomed like a forest.

“Humans, you got me today,” Angus rasped, fury bubbling like tar. “Fine. I’ll pay it back. I’m a Lich—so long as my phylactery stands, I will never—”

A butterfly drifted in, wings shedding rainbow like rain on oil. His words snapped short, cut like a string.

He knew that butterfly, the way one knows a knife at the throat. The danger he’d sensed under the dogs’ paws had come from it.

Meaning, that butterfly could kill him in an instant, like lightning. His mouth went dry.

“…A god…” The word fell out like frost.

No mistake. That breath, he’d felt it a millennium ago on angels and infernal beings. It was the breath of a god, high and clean as a peak.

He wanted to ask fate what sick joke this was, rage boiling like steam. He’d come to stir a small village, that was all.

A peer showing up would’ve been bad enough, he thought, teeth set like stones. He’d even planned to use a Lich’s gift—phylactery safe, soul unending.

He would detonate his skeleton, burst like a grenade of bone. Even if it didn’t kill a peer, the shockwave could reap the village children like wheat.

His soul would take a hit, pain like ice in marrow. For a breath of revenge, he’d bear it.

Who knew a god would appear? The sky opened like an eye.

A phylactery binds a Lich’s soul, but a god strikes from another plane like a cold wind. And the Underground and surface aren’t different worlds.

Within one world, a god could find his phylactery as easily as plucking a lantern from the dark. The thought punched him hollow.

Before he could move, darkness fell like a curtain. The next heartbeat, he was nowhere.

One-shot. Angus was sure of it, certainty hard as stone. He’d been insta-killed.

Now he floated inside his phylactery, a black box of night. He saw, in memory, where he’d hidden it.

A basement, in a house, in a dungeon city, in the Underground. A box inside a room inside a room, nested like shells.

“This is the gap between mortal and god…” he murmured, voice thin as smoke. Relief washed him, warm as a fire.

The god hadn’t cared to hunt his phylactery, praise the dark. And he was lucky he hadn’t started a full slaughter, he thought, breath easing.

He replayed it, step by step, like stones across a stream. He’d felt a god near the village edge once, but hate fogged his eyes.

The god never raised a hand, not then. Only when he slipped into a house and reached for two children did the blade of danger press.

The dog-smack blew him away, and the kids went unhurt. The god’s breath faded like wind in pines.

But when he chose to self-detonate and shatter the village, that aura returned. This time, no hesitation—clean strike, and he was gone.

By that logic, if he’d killed even one person or animal, the god would’ve chased him into the Underground like a hawk. It would have smashed his phylactery.

Revived by the phylactery, Angus brooded in his basement like a bat. The surface, he decided, was wrong in too many ways.

First, the elements. Up there, the elements danced too wild, like fireflies in a storm.

He’d once watched a cleric open a gate to the Divine Realm with divine magic. The power spilling out was only a shade denser than the surface air.

Next, the moons and suns. They’d gone strange, like a clock gone mad.

If his memory hadn’t been tampered with, and he wasn’t mistaken, there were three moons and three suns. No—hold on.

On his first day topside, he’d seen four suns wheeling like burning coins. On the second, the day he died, there were three.

He mulled it a long while, thoughts circling like crows. Then Angus left the basement.

The house wasn’t his, not on any ledger, not in rumor. The city had no tie to him, either.

That was his trickster’s edge, a fox’s den inside the hunter’s yard. He hadn’t hidden the phylactery in his castle or domain.

He’d tucked it in a small city under his old rival’s rule. In an ordinary resident’s cellar, a hidden room beneath their feet like a burrow.

Even the homeowner didn’t know that cavity existed. Most dangerous place, safest place—the tiger’s den hid the cub.

So for millennia, enemies razed his homes like storms. They searched and searched, and never found the heart of him.

He slipped out, careful not to rattle the owner upstairs. Stir them, and the odds of exposure rose like floodwater.

On the street, something felt off, a draft across the bones. This dungeon city wasn’t top rank, but it pulsed with steady foot traffic.

Today, the avenues lay thin as a winter market. The Underground’s Sunlight Plan had drafted most fighters, so lean crowds made sense.

What didn’t make sense was the roar of noise not far away. He followed the sound like a scent.

It rose from the City Lord’s manor, a hive buzzing. He snagged a passing werewolf by the wrist, grip light as a spider’s thread.

“Brother, what’s the fuss over there?” he asked, voice mild as mist.

Werewolves run hot, but he felt Angus’s mind-pressure like a tide. Realizing he was outclassed, he answered quick, words tumbling like pebbles.

In short, most of the city’s residents had gone to loot the City Lord’s treasures. The lord had died yesterday on the surface, like a candle in wind.

The escort he took died too, bones silent as stones. The guards left couldn’t dam the flood.

Everyone rushed in to strip the manor, hands like rakes. In the Underground, this was old custom, a winter harvest.

When a City Lord died, his own men carved the estate first. Loyalty didn’t live down here; only teeth did.

This city’s lord was a Hydra, nine heads like a thicket of snakes. Not near-god like Angus the archmagus, but still magus-tier and mean.

Dead anyway, the werewolf spat, eyes hard as flint. Rumor said he’d led his guard at night to cross a river.

He wanted to sack a small town on the far bank, quick as a fox. They never sent word back, not by dawn, not at noon.

The Underground sent expendable goblins to scout, bodies cheap as straw. They found bones floating on the river like driftwood.

After long watching, they learned the river ran thick with monsters. The fish had become spirits, teeth bright as needles.

One city lord scoffed and tried a forced crossing, banners snapping like crows. The river answered with a boil of bodies.

They were stripped to bone by countless fish, a white slick on black water.