IMMOLATION TO INFILTRATION: THE A-MAZE-ING MONOPOLIZATION OF THE IMMORTAL MORDAMIR

By Quillon42

I told him to read those goblin damned runes then.

The tight-lipped little koboldshit, he just stood there stock, holding out that sunstreaked medallion to the Dragon as if it were a crucifix against the undead. So I just magnetically swiped the trinket from that red-cowled coward's geriatric ass, and then I magically had at the fool himself.

He pulled all these incantations out of his warlocking wazoo, Statue and Sonic Protection and such that he probably got from that…Dumbprick and his mousehole-moseying whore of a daughter. Sure, then I bragged that the Dragon couldn't harm me while I had the Amulet, and that was when my latest student stole the bauble back with his polarized paws.

But I'm a sorcerer of several centuries' experience here. I'm not caught off guard that easily.

Sensing that such a turnabout would likely arise then, I whipped up a couple more tricks that instant—Static Maws for the disgusting drake to stay mum, so his breath wouldn't broil me…and Kinetic Mouths (what mortals in much more mundane realities would call "ventriloquism"), for me to read the runes vicariously through the very warm body I trained all these decades. So I guess it wasn't a waste to put him through all those paces after all, even if he ended up going from protégé to effigy.

I imagine my muscle Ulindor, who was supposed to be watching my most prized prisoner on the Seventh Level Down, he couldn't even take out a miniaturized troll, let alone my ancient apprentice who tracked me all the way down here and almost—almost had that miserable lizard do me most molten in the end. Well, you know what they say about if you want to get a job done right…

In that way, I suppose, that insignificant implet inspired me. Trudging through this entire labyrinth all on his own mystical steam, while I was too scare…er, well let's just say too prone to boredom, to go solo myself. I in fact led an effing expedition down through here with Dun, Ulin, and some of those other double-digit-aged whippersnapper fucks, I can't recall all of their names. They did my bidding, so much mortal human means for me to realize the undying ends I'd sought.

Couldn't let them all die in vain, now could I?

You should've seen me then, after I had the maven and the monster alike become barbecue. I vanished seemingly as quickly as I came onto that sordid scene, hauled my hoary haunches back up a couple floors and such. Spied on those greeny goobers as they marked and marveled at the Fountain past the waterways, a spring which they themselves did not touch (better restraint than I could ever muster, I'll admit) but rather told one another they'd tell their King Gresh then get him down there to test it out. I wasn't about to abide such a waste of natural resources.

Nope, I proved rather efficient, as a matter of course. Spirited myself right in front of that pair of jade jerkoffs, then like a hula dancer at a fucking Hawaiian airport (I'm recounting this story a mite bit after its events—I *am* the real immortal, after all), I lavished them both with a very special sort of lei…one of a quite particular variety known as Norlac.

Land, it was worth getting my robes a bit ripe, yanking that pocket kraken right out of the vortex just to see the looks on the faces of those ornery orcs. …And the number it did on them, right then and there…I thought that ground worms were voracious, my evilness!

Then it was time for me to go trolling. I utilized my own Protean band to ape one of those ram-headed hard-ons, posed as their own long-fallen monarch for a matter of seconds. You know they have their codes and their customs; the entire entrollage prostrated themselves posthaste as soon as they saw me. That made it so easy to take them out with one of their own bombs, enhanced with a will o' the wisp to convert the explosive from debilitating to destructive.

That wasn't the only Level whose inhabitants I had…let's say, evicted, either. I let that overgrown pest in Six spread all of her legs for far too long; man, but the children she spawned in all those silken sacks, she was verily an incredible Octomom to end them all. Didn't matter how many there were; another several draughts of alcohol laced with fireballs, and this Mordamir went Molotov on the entire establishment. Just like something out of Aliens…gods it was so gratifying to grill them out.

All of this hard work down here made me so exhausted in the end…and rather thirsty, you know. So once I converted the abovementioned species of deadly denizens from endangered to extinct, I took it upon myself to replenish myself at that Fountain for which all my endeavors were directed from the first. I gathered a few draughts of the water in some of those small jade decanters I left lying around for that noob of a novice (the nerve of him, haggling with merchant-me to bring down my price of slime oil!)…then I figured fuck it, I'd just all-out shower in the spring, for my thousand-year trouble.

How soothing it was to crack open a couple more olive bottles right then and there, the Shampoo of the Salamander and Conditioner of the Cockatrice which I ordinarily reserved for bathtimes far more banal. I scrubbed myself down with a sliver of Soap of the Squonk and a short spell later, I was pretty much set.

Thought to myself after that that I would go and get the Erinoch Examiner at the surface; they've been delivering periodicals on papyrus daily without fail for the last few millennia. Turns out an idiot even more ancient and antagonistic than I am is pushing, with politics infinitely more insane than my own agendas, for a cataclysm to set civilization back to a time before even the Labyrinth of Eternity was laid out. Well, this trumped-up bunker might be a bit barbarous, but it'll cover me for when the inevitable catastrophe crashes all over from Mesopotamia to Minnesota.

The straw beds around here feel too lonely anymore. Think I'll go root around those gaping cracks in the walls again to look for Ana; I'm sure she won't be amenable, but a pinch of Complaisance Dust will make her come around. I'll be sure to baptize her in the Fountain as well, to make her more age-appropriate; I'm a peerless wizard, not a pedophile weirdo.