Lich for Hire

By the time news of the imperial family's annihilation spread beyond Lyon's borders, Ambrose had already reached the coast of the Emerald Dreamwood.

He hadn't gotten involved in Leyla's task beyond offering a few thoughts.

This was the first assignment Sylvanas had given her, and the Oakfather had no great fondness for the undead. Understandable, really: the undead had opted out of the natural cycle entirely, refusing to become nourishment for other living things even in death.

Giving advice was one thing; involving himself further might put Sylvanas in a poor mood, and irritating a major deity was not something Leyla needed on top of everything else.

So Ambrose pointed Brandir in a potential direction before moving on to his next destination: the Silent Sea.

At the shore, he found a familiar face waiting: Sharpspear Phil The undead zombie was the same as always. He was half-decomposed and looking rather the worse for wear, but the harpoon in his hand glowed faintly with a new enchantment, and a stronger one by the look of it.

"Well now, honored guest, apologies for keeping you waiting out here."

As courteous as ever, he waved Ambrose and his companions aboard with genuine enthusiasm.

Before boarding, Ambrose left Bear and Husky on the Blacktide with instructions to take it in a different direction and deliver a letter to the Ragetide Kingdom.

He had written it under the name of the late Monge Greywater and addressed it to Princess Ariel of Ragetide. The upcoming campaign against the overseas dragon clans would likely require naval support, and the Ragetide Kingdom was the obvious candidate.

Whether they agreed to help wasn't, however, the key. Ambrose mostly wanted to show them what undead alchemy could do.

The Blacktide itself certainly wasn't for sale, but a reduced-specification model might be, provided they could pay for it.

Bear and Husky were sharp enough to handle that errand without supervision. Satisfied, Ambrose brought Milena aboard the ghost ship.

The moment she stepped on deck, Milena glanced around excitedly like a child.

She took everything in with wide golden eyes. She had never seen the open ocean before, and the knowledge that the ghost ship would soon be diving beneath it, into a world she hadn't imagined, had completely overridden any other purpose she might have had for being here.

Certainly she had forgotten this was supposed to be an educational experience for her.

Ambrose didn't comment. The girl's mind wasn't going to sharpen overnight. Time and experience would do the work gradually, wearing grooves into what was currently a very smooth brain.

He positioned himself on deck and shared a drink with Phil instead. His mechanical body had been waterproofed for this journey, so there was nothing to worry about.

They enjoyed the same vintage as before: century-old spirits infused with infernal toxin, potent enough to make even an undead soul feel the pleasant blur of something approaching intoxication.

"Honored guest, you have no idea how dull things have been lately," Phil said, his tone mournful. "We're not raiding Ragetide ships anymore, and there's nothing worth taking on the open sea..."

Phil went on in this vein for a while. Life had been good before the treaty—eventful, purposeful, and full of the particular satisfaction that came from taking things that didn't belong to you. Now that the Ragetide treaty was in place, the wind had gone out of his sails.

The "reparations" Ragetide paid were meaningless; the undead had no use for money. What they craved was the small number of experiences that could still genuinely excite a dead soul. Piracy had been one such.

There was nothing to be done about it, though. Aige was the mistress of the Silent Sea, and Phil's orders were absolute. Complaining to Ambrose would have to be enough.

"Even if Ragetide is off the table, isn't there anything else worth pillaging? What about the fishmen tribes? There must be dozens of them out there."

The ocean dwarfed the continent. The combined population of the aquatic races probably outnumbered the land-dwellers by at least an order of magnitude.

Phil scoffed dismissively. "What do they have that's worth taking? They eke out a living off the seafloor. We can dredge up anything the ocean has to offer without their help. And besides, there's no sport in it. It's too easy. Land-made things are far more interesting."

Though Phil was himself a fishman zombie, he regarded living fishmen with much the same detachment that Ambrose paid to living humans. Whatever race you had belonged to in life ceased to matter once you were undead. They were their own species now.

Human zombies, for instance, were happiest munching on the brains of the living. They bore no loyalty to their original kind, either.

Ambrose reflected that he had been thinking of this crew as ordinary pirates, which was an oversight. These were undead pirates who could breathe underwater. The treasures of the deep were theirs for the taking whenever they felt like it.

"What about the githarks?" Ambrose asked. "I heard they've been establishing settlements somewhere offshore."

Phil came alive at that. "Now those are decent opponents! When they first showed up, I took some of my crew out and we had a real scrap with them. They even had dragons with them! But then the commander ordered us to stay clear, so we've been keeping our heads down ever since."

He leaned forward. "Is that why you're here, honored guest? Looking for a fight? Word reached us that you went up against Lyon on land. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers fighting all at once, with tens of thousands of casualties on their side from you alone—that must have been a sight to behold!"

Ambrose stared at him. That tale had apparently traveled a few hundred kilometers and turned into unrecognizable gossip in the process.

Phil was obviously obsessed with combat. He had the kind of personality who constantly sought out, in life and apparently also in death, the thrill of a real fight. The same way Ambrose was drawn to wealth, Phil was drawn to battle.

"I'm actually here to discuss something with your commander," Ambrose said. "But if it's a fight you're after, there'll be plenty of that. My target is the githark settlements and the dragon clans overseas."

Phil's face split into a grin that displayed every one of his irregular, needle-sharp teeth, a deeply unsettling sight. He clapped Ambrose on the shoulder with a wet, heavy hand. "Perfect! No wonder you're the commander's honored guest. We're surely best of friends, you and I!"

Ambrose looked at his pauldron with some disdain. A palm-shaped smear of rot and pus had been left on its mithril surface.

"One more thing," he said. "Out on the open ocean, setting aside the dragons and the githarks, which intelligent race is the most powerful? The fishmen?"

Phil thought about it. "If you count all fishmen as a single group, then sure, they're the largest. But they're not really one group. Different fishman species are as distinct from each other as humans are from tiflings. They're completely different creatures. I was a shagin in life. The ones you captured before were kouto. When I was alive, I ate kouto."

He paused to consider. "But if you're asking about raw power, organized power, that would be the merfolk who follow Ezdolo. They have large numbers and strong spellcasters to boot."

Merfolk and fishmen differed in terms of their bodies.

Most merfolk had human torsos and fish tails where their legs would have been. Most fishmen had four fully functional limbs and a fish's head, with some species retaining a tail at their back.

This was why merfolk had been romanticized in human stories as ethereal, beautiful creatures, their looks frequently compared to the elves. The reality was more varied: merfolk looked as different from one another as humans did, with the same full range of beauty from striking to unremarkable.

Merfolk alone would be manageable, but merfolk who worshipped Ezdolo were a different matter. Ambrose had come here to help Aige build a following, and a rival deity with an established merfolk congregation would surely be a complication.

He had a sinking feeling he was about to encounter a problem that he was growing very familiar with. "Here we go again," he thought. "Another goddess to accidentally antagonize."

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