Chapter Text

Chapter 9: The Lich

The Hellfire room always smelled the same: dust, graphite, and something faintly sweet from the soda machine down the hall.

Dustin noticed it the second he stepped inside, like his brain needed confirmation that this place still existed exactly the way it always had.

Same scuffed tables pushed together. Same faded posters curling off the walls. Same pile of rulebooks stacked in the corner like a precarious monument to bad decisions and worse dice rolls.

Normal. Or close enough to pretend.

Mike dropped his backpack beside a chair and sank down like gravity had suddenly increased. Lucas stayed standing, rolling a d20 slowly between his fingers. 

Click. Click. Click.

The silence had edges now.

Across the room, Eddie was setting the table.

Not literally. Yet.

Miniatures moved across the battle map in small deliberate arcs, goblins here, a stone archway there, while he considered something no one else could see. The DM screen leaned against the rulebooks like a pair of wings waiting to open. Eddie seemed to like the ritual of this part, the slow build before the chaos. 

Dustin got that, and figured Sophia would probably approve. The thought arrived uninvited, and he filed it away. 

“Hey,” Dustin said.

Eddie didn’t look up. “Hmm?”

“I have a question,” he continued, wiping his palms against his pants. “About Vecna.”

That got everyone’s attention.

Eddie’s hand stopped halfway to a miniature skeleton. Not dramatic. Just still. He lifted his head slowly.

“…Vecna?” he said.

Dustin nodded.

Mike shifted in his chair beside him. Lucas stopped rolling the die.

Eddie set the skeleton down carefully.

“Why,” he asked, drawing the word out like he was testing it for cracks, “are we asking about Vecna?”

Dustin shrugged. “Curiosity.”

Eddie leaned back in his chair, which creaked under him.

“Uh-huh.” He pointed a finger at Dustin. “You don’t ask lore questions unless you’re plotting something.”

Gareth snorted from the other end of the table. “He’s right.”

“I resent that accusation,” Dustin said, defensively.

“You should resent it,” Gareth said. “Because it’s accurate.”

Jeff cracked open a soda. The can hissed softly, breaking the silence.

Dustin waved a hand. “Someone I know mentioned Vecna.”

Eddie’s eyebrows lifted. “Someone.”

Dustin hesitated, just long enough to feel Mike’s attention shift beside him.

“…Sophia,” he admitted, not looking at anyone.

The pause that followed wasn’t loud, but it spread across the table anyway.

Eddie blinked once. Then leaned forward slightly.

“Harrington’s girlfriend?” Gareth said immediately.

Jeff barked out a laugh.

“Wait,” Gareth said, turning fully toward Dustin. “Harrington’s girlfriend knows Vecna?”

Dustin didn’t answer right away. Outsiders might think that was the strange part, Steve’s girlfriend knowing Vecna. But technically that wasn’t it. 

The weird part was why she'd said the name at all. 

Because she wasn't talking about game play. She was using it to name a monster that was coming for them. Another one. 

Across the table, Eddie made a face. Not surprised, exactly. More like the expression someone made when two puzzle pieces fit together in a way they hadn’t expected.

“…Okay,” Eddie said slowly. “First of all, that woman continues to surprise me.”

Mike didn’t react. Lucas didn’t laugh.

Dustin noticed Eddie notice that.

Eddie’s eyes flicked across the three of them, quick and sharp.

Then he pushed his chair back slightly and planted both hands on the table.

“Alright,” he said, tapping the wood once with a knuckle. “Vecna.”

The room settled a little. Even Gareth leaned forward.

“Vecna,” Eddie said, voice dropping into the tone he used when he wanted people to listen, “is not your average villain.”

Gareth groaned. “Oh god.”

“He asked,” Eddie said, pointing decisively at Dustin. He leaned back in his chair, balancing it on the rear legs.

“Vecna,” he continued, “was once a man.”

Mike went very still. Dustin felt it the way you feel someone stop breathing next to you.

“Wizard,” Eddie said. “Brilliant. Powerful. The kind of guy who looks at the rules of the universe and decides—”

Eddie snapped his fingers. “—yeah, I can break that.”

Jeff whistled quietly.

Eddie rocked his chair forward again.

“Eventually he stops being just powerful,” he said, his voice lowering slightly. “He becomes something else.”

A second passed.

“A lich.”

Gareth made a face. “That sounds disgusting.”

“It is,” Eddie said cheerfully. “Because a lich is basically a wizard who refuses to die.”

Lucas and Mike leaned forward.

Eddie’s voice shifted again, less joking now.

“They don’t fight you the way normal enemies do.” He leaned forward slightly. “They plan.”

Lucas’s fingers tightened around the die.

Dustin watched Eddie’s hands as he spoke, the way his fingers moved over the map like he was tracing invisible paths.

“Vecna’s the kind of villain,” he said slowly, “who wins—”

Eddie tapped the table once. “—before the fight even starts.”

Dustin felt something in his chest tighten, because that sounded familiar. Not the words, but the shape of it.

The way Sophia had said the name. The way Robin tensed. The way Steve had gone still beside her like he already understood what it meant.

“Rot-from-the-inside type,” Eddie added. 

Dustin's pencil stopped. He'd been turning the briefing over since it happened, the way he turned everything over, looking for the seam where it stopped making sense. It hadn't stopped making sense. 

That was the part that kept catching. Sophia hadn't been guessing. She'd recognized it. Like you recognized a word you'd heard before in a different language.

Dustin nodded slowly. He leaned forward again.

“So,” Dustin said carefully, “does Vecna go after a particular type of person?”

Eddie tilted his head. “In game?”

“Strategically,” Lucas added.

Eddie considered that.

“Well,” he said slowly, “Vecna’s not dumb.”

Gareth scoffed. “No kidding.”

“He isolates people,” Eddie said. “Breaks the party structure.”

Lucas’s fist squeezed around the die.

Divide and conquer.

Dustin nodded again. “Right.”

He hesitated. Someone else didn’t.

“Does he mark them?” Mike asked, tone and face serious.

Too quick. Too sharp.

The air shifted.

Eddie looked at him more thoughtfully.

Lucas noticed Eddie noticing.

Dustin felt the moment wobble like a die spinning on its edge. He leaned in quickly.

“Like curse mechanics,” Dustin said. “Game-wise.”

Eddie’s eyes moved back to Dustin. Then he nodded.

“Yeah,” he said.

Mike’s shoulders loosened a fraction.

“In a lot of campaigns,” Eddie said slowly, “Vecna doesn’t show up first.”

He tapped the map. “The curse does.”

Jeff frowned. “That seems unfair.”

“Oh it is,” Eddie said. “That’s the point. It’s fun for the DM at least.”

Dustin rubbed the edge of his character sheet between his fingers.

“How do you stop a lich,” he asked slowly, “if it’s already in someone’s head?”

Eddie looked at him longer this time, his eyes curious. 

Then he smiled.

“Ah,” he said. “Now that’s the question.”

He drummed his fingers on the table.

“Well.” He pointed around the group. “First rule: you don’t fight a lich alone.”

Lucas nodded almost immediately.

“Second rule.” Eddie gestured at Jeff. “You protect the squishies.”

Jeff raised his hand. “I object to that classification.”

“You are absolutely a squishy,” Gareth said.

Eddie ignored both of them.

“Vecna wins when the party fractures,” he said.

Dustin didn’t look at Mike or Lucas. He didn’t need to.

“So the real move isn’t charging him head-on.” Eddie continued, leaning back. “It’s prep.”

Prep.

The word settled into Dustin’s brain like a die clicking into place.

Not panic. Not heroics. Prep.

Mike sat up straighter.

“You learn the pattern,” Eddie continued. “You keep the party together.”

Lucas nodded once. Like that made sense. “And then?”

Eddie grinned.

“Then,” he said, “you go for the phylactery.”

Jeff blinked, soda paused an inch from his mouth. “The what?”

“The thing keeping him alive,” Eddie explained, flicking a hand toward the table like the answer was obvious.

“Oh.” Dustin leaned back in his chair, realization creeping in.

Rules existed. And if rules existed, monsters could be learned.

He glanced sideways at Mike, who was staring at the table, pencil unmoving. Mike's fist closed. The graphite snapped. 

Lucas caught Dustin's eye across the dice tray. A quiet agreement. Later. They'd check with Sophia later. 

Dustin picked up his die, turned it once between his fingers.

"Okay, but," he said, "how do you actually beat Vecna? Not survive. Beat."

Eddie looked at him for a second too long.

"That," he said, "is a much longer campaign."