Lich for Hire

As Percival Lyon approached the Draconic Armaments, the suit of armor seemed to come alive.

The mithril lattice separating them appeared to be absorbed by some unseen force, dissolving piece by piece until the barrier was gone entirely, as though it had never been built.

The Draconic Armaments rose slowly into the air, drifted toward him, and merged with his body.

The sensation was unusual. When he previously wielded the Armaments, it had always felt like forcing a door open against its will. This was different. The armor and his flesh seemed almost to be fusing inextricably.

Atros's voice rose in his mind: "Good. We are one now."

The young emperor clenched his fist. A layer of fine dragon scales rippled across the surface of his skin.

"This is the true form of the Draconic Armaments. You don't need to transform into a dragon every time you call on them. Your body now carries the strength of a dragon. Your skin is as hard as a dragon's scales. Now go. Deal with your problems."

"How?" Percival asked.

"You need me to spell that out?" Atros's tone was almost contemptuous. "What do you want? And who stands in your way?"

Percival's eyes lit up. "They want me to abdicate. They want me dead."

"Exactly. You want the throne, and someone is stopping you. How do you remove an obstacle? Do you really need me to answer that?"

Percival nodded once, then turned and walked out of the underground vault with long, certain strides.

The careful, measured steps he took on the way in were no longer necessary. Magical traps, poison jets, hidden blades—he ignored them all.

An invisible force enveloped him. Everything that came for him simply... reversed. Poison gas recoiled at his skin. Blades melted into molten iron before they touched him. Trap mechanisms wound themselves backward the instant they triggered, collapsing into nothing before they could fire.

This was the power of time. Every attack was simply undone.

The commotion Percival made passing through the corridor drew guards quickly. When they saw who had set off the traps, a grizzled captain stepped forward, his voice flat with barely concealed irritation.

"Your Majesty, have you forgotten how to walk this passage? Do you have any idea how much work it takes to reset these mechanisms?"

Percival looked at him. "Are you questioning me?"

The guard captain's family name was also Lyon. His son had once competed for the throne in the same selection as Percival, and lost. Now father and son both served in the palace guard, standing side by side before him.

Percival's abdication was imminent, and a quiet execution would soon follow to contain the scandal. The next emperor would most likely be chosen from among their ranks. That fact had not been lost on either of them. They had stopped treating Percival like an emperor some time ago. By lineage, they were his elders, and they acted accordingly.

The captain answered without a trace of deference, "Even an emperor is bound by traditions that have stood for centuries. I am the captain of the guard. Pointing out when those traditions are violated is my duty. Is there a problem with that, Your Majesty?"

The last two words had the tone of an insult. The guard captain lifted his chin, and looked down at Percival scornfully.

Percival smiled unpleasantly. "Yes, actually. There is a problem, but it's not one you can fix."

He snapped his fingers.

Nothing seemed to happen—until the captain screamed. His armor was changing. The metal was softening, heating, and liquefying, reverting to the state it had been in the moment it came out of the forge.

Searing heat scorched his skin instantly. Smoke rose from his body. He thrashed and clawed at himself as the iron pooled around him, but every magical item he carried that might have protected him shattered the moment it tried to activate, its enchantment unwound before it could take hold.

He was burned to death in front of everyone.

His son followed a moment later. He hadn't even had time to move toward his father before his own armor liquefied and took him the same way.

The remaining guards stood frozen. They understood what they had just witnessed. Percival had claimed the Draconic Armaments. He had used them to reverse the age of the metal back to the moment it was still molten.

But how? The procedures required to remove the Armaments from the vault were extensive. And without the elders' authorization, the Armaments weren't supposed to be able to activate at all.

No one had an answer. The corridor was silent save for Percival's laughter as he stared down at the two charred bodies.

This was the first time in his life he had felt anything like this. So this was what it felt like to hold power, real power!

What was imperial authority? He was imperial authority!

Still laughing, Percival moved through the corridor and killed everyone in it. The smell of scorched flesh spread through the passage and drifted outward.

"They had already submitted," Atros noted. "You could have kept them. There was no need for that."

An emperor still needed assistants. He couldn't do everything himself. The boy's bloodlust was running hot. Years of suppression were loosening all at once, and now he couldn't stop himself.

"It doesn't matter," Percival said. "Lyon has hundreds of millions of people. There are always more."

Atros said nothing further. Fair enough. There would be no shortage of deaths before all this was over.

Percival walked on over the charred remains, heading deeper into the palace, toward the underground chamber where the ancient fogeys kept their coffins.

Everyone who moved to stop him along the way died.

At first, Percival took his time, enjoying the novelty of his newfound power. By the end he stopped bothering. He simply tore them apart with his hands.

With a dragon's strength fueling him, nothing in this palace could touch him. The imperial family had not produced a legendary fighter in many years. There was no one to resist him.

He arrived at last at the underground burial chamber, leaving a trail of blood in his wake.

Thirteen coffins had originally lain in this chamber; two had been removed after their occupants died of rage upon hearing of the battlefield disaster, and then promptly replaced.

The imperial family never ran short of the elderly seeking to avoid death. The two vacant slots had been filled without difficulty.

Percival surveyed the thirteen stone coffins. "How many emperors did you go through?" he said quietly. "How many did you turn into puppets? How long were you planning to hold this empire in your hands?"

Silence from the coffins. Their occupants were still submerged in the dreamlike state that prolonged their lives, and the attendants who might have roused them were already dead. Percival had crushed their skulls on his way in.

"Out of respect for the blood we share," he said, "I'll make it painless."

He stepped up to the nearest coffin and raised his right hand.

His palm came down. The stone shattered. The elder inside was reduced to pulp in the same instant.

He worked through all thirteen coffins. One after another, the coffins burst apart. The blood of the elders soaked into the floor and ran across his feet and stained the front of his robes.

Percival didn't bother wiping it off. He threw his head back and shouted at the ceiling. "From this day onward, I am the only Emperor of Lyon!"

"Don't celebrate yet," Atros said. "You still have one problem left."

Percival already knew who he meant. William Garrison, Lyon's Mightiest Shield, was still waiting outside the palace gates.

"Can't I kill him with your power?" Percival asked.

"Of course, but what would happen next? Lyon still has plenty of legends. Can you kill all of them? And even if you could, you can't rule alone. You need assistants."

"Then what do you suggest? The old man is immovable. No one can talk him into anything."

"The power of the time dragon," Atros began, "is not as simple as melting armor and stopping blades. Your command over time is still far too narrow. Who says you have to age his body to kill him? Why not revert his memories instead?"

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