Lich for Hire

Traveling aboard Aige herself felt distinctly different from anything Ambrose had experienced before.

Ordinary ghost ships ran on the power of concentrated spiritual energy and still had to physically displace the water around them. From what Ambrose understood, a ghost ship could briefly phase into an incorporeal state to evade attacks, but only for three to five seconds at most, and only a limited number of times before the ability was spent.

Aige was different. Her true form could sustain that incorporeal state indefinitely. She moved through the deep ocean as a translucent shadow, passing through the water rather than through it—untouchable, invisible in any meaningful sense, and entirely unaffected by current or pressure.

Her speed in this state was extraordinary, and the effect extended to everything aboard. Passengers and cargo all phased alongside her.

"You've left the material plane entirely, haven't you?" Ambrose asked.

Aige smiled. "I can't explain the mechanics. All I know is that I can go anywhere in the ocean I choose to go. I think it might be my father's blessing."

The old shipwright had poured everything into his creation, treating the vessel he built as his own daughter. His dying wish had been that this ship would one day reach every corner of the sea.

The force of that wish had fed his soul into the ship at the moment of his death; and thus Aige had been born.

For a long time after, Aige had simply drifted, purposeless, pulled by no particular current. Living creatures were drawn to the ghost ship and died aboard it, and the blood and souls they left behind accumulated until, eventually, awareness kindled from the accumulation. When she first became a conscious, independent mind, the Necromantic Codex had appeared on her deck.

Even then, it had taken her years to learn to read, and more years still to understand what the Codex was for.

Aige did not possess exceptional intellect, but she did possess exceptional power. The ghost ship could travel anywhere in the ocean, and nothing could stop it.

Reefs, underwater volcanoes, the colossal sea creatures that lurked in the deepest trenches—none of it registered as an obstacle.

If something was foolish enough to reach out a tentacle or open a jaw at the passing ship, the dark energy radiating from the hull would rot it away in moments. Ambrose watched a giant octopus, its suckers wider across than his skull, dissolve steadily into nothing, then get absorbed by the ship without leaving so much as a fragment of bone behind.

Flesh and souls both fueled the dark energy that sustained the undead. That was the fundamental tension between the living and the undead. The undead could survive without consuming anything, but who didn't want to get stronger?

The ship offered no sensation of movement. There was no water resistance, no current, no rocking; just the stillness of the incorporeal, and the impossible complexity of the ocean floor scrolling past at speed.

Ambrose found he had no reliable way to gauge how fast they were moving. The terrain below was too irregular, too vast, too unlike anything on land. All he knew was that every fish, every formation, every feature fell behind them quickly.

Time became difficult to track in the deep ocean. Ambrose only noticed how long they had been traveling when he glanced over and found that Milena had exhausted her interest in the view and produced a small notebook, which she was filling with careful writing.

"What are you working on?" he asked.

"A travel journal," she said, entirely serious. "Mother told me to watch and learn carefully while I travel with you. I need to record what you say and do so I can study it properly when we return."

Ambrose laughed. "What exactly do you expect to learn from that?"

Intelligence, he had come to understand, had many facets. An alchemical genius might not know how to hold a kitchen knife. His talented cook might be a charming rogue on the side, perfectly positioned to win over the genius's household and arrange for his early death.

People-reading, logical reasoning, observational range, lateral thinking, emotional regulation, and the thoroughly unreasonable gift of sudden inspiration—add enough of these together, and what emerged would be what most people called wisdom.

Wisdom was a tower whose architecture differed from person to person. Their heights varied, as did their structural integrity.

Harvey was the clearest example Ambrose could think of. He possessed raw talent so exceptional it made Ambrose envious, and a natural foundation that could support a tower of enormous height.

But Harvey was slow with people. He didn't always read a room well, and he had an unfortunate tendency to be caught off guard by social dynamics he hadn't anticipated.

That was a vulnerability in the structure, and a tall tower with a weakness might collapse dramatically when struck there. It made him look foolish in ways that his underlying brilliance didn't deserve.

As for Milena, Ambrose was fairly certain the responsibility was his. Something in his soul-weaving had gone off in the wrong direction at a critical moment. What had emerged was a combat prodigy of a kind he had never seen: despite barely having been born, she was already formidable enough that Sariel had extended a personal invitation to join the forces of Hell. Her battle instincts operated on a level that left other undead far behind, and her golden eyes that pierced through any deception made her effectively unbeatable in a fight.

In combat, her tower wasn't a tower at all. It was a mountain.

There was no particular reason to chase all-around development that didn't suit her nature.

Milena had an entire undead kingdom as her foundation. She didn't need superior intelligence—she just needed to be herself. She wasn't like Ambrose, who had arrived in a strange world with nothing and nobody, having to learn everything from first principles just to stay alive.

Life had knocked him around until he absorbed people-reading, alchemy, magic, survival, history, theology, and a dozen other disciplines, not because he had wanted to, but because the alternative was worse. It hadn't been a noble journey of self-improvement. It had been unpleasant and exhausting, and looking back on it produced nothing but a dull irritation.

Milena wasn't his biological daughter, but he had no desire to see her spend a few centuries getting knocked around the same way. That seemed like an unnecessarily grim outcome.

He reached over and patted her on the shoulder. "Milena, you're not like other people. Don't waste time trying to become something you're not. Focus on being who you are. When you can hold your own against Uncle Gareth in a real fight, then we can talk about branching out."

That raised a question he had been quietly curious about for some time now. How strong was Gareth, actually?

The members of the Elegiac Society all had their distinct abilities, but Gareth's combat record suggested something that didn't quite add up, the more Ambrose thought about it. He had seen Gareth fight, but only against opponents who didn't give him any real challenge. He had never seen the man go all out.

Having Milena spar with him was genuinely worth considering. A Dullahan against a death knight... They were, professionally speaking, natural counterparts. He would make an ideal training partner.

He was still mulling the idea over when the ghost ship slowed.

"We're approaching the Dragon Graveyard," Aige said. "We should surface before we get too close. If the dragons can't see us coming, they'll assume the worst."

Ambrose smiled slightly. "Some degree of trouble is unavoidable regardless. But you're right. It's better to announce ourselves first. Let me get word to Gareth."

He opened the Necromantic Codex and sent a message to Gareth. [Megaman Tiga: Bro, I'm nearly at the Dragon Graveyard. Let the bone dragons know we're coming so there's no misunderstanding.]

He had arranged this visit with Gareth before departing and confirmed that the latter would be waiting. Otherwise the journey this far offshore would have been pointless. They were deep in open ocean now, far from the continent. Even a dragon would need days of sustained flight to reach this place.

The reply came quickly. [Dullahan's Crown: Already? Hang on, I'm coming out to meet you. Don't get any closer for now. Things have been tense lately. We wouldn't want to cause a misunderstanding.]

So the situation was still volatile.

Now that the astral dragons had arrived and established themselves nearby, the existing dragons no longer viewed the bone dragons quite so warmly.

The ghost ship rose slowly until it broke the surface.

As the incorporeality broke, the sea air hit Ambrose all at once, salt and wind carrying the faint, unmistakable taint of concentrated dark energy. The Dragon Graveyard was still far enough away that the coastline was just a thin line on the horizon, and yet even at this distance, the ambient dark energy was perceptible. Whatever had accumulated there over the centuries was certainly concentrated.

The sea around them was clear, at least. There was no githark fleet on the water, no dragons circling overhead, just a white line cutting toward them across the surface: Gareth, riding out across the waves.

The Dullahan's eight-legged steed galloped across the ocean, kicking up a churning wake.

The horse had to be bearing some form of enchantment. An animal that size had no business running on open water, let alone at that speed.

Gareth covered the distance in style. He always did. Every entrance was an event, whether he intended it or not.

Ambrose knew perfectly well that the man wasn't doing it on purpose. He simply couldn't bear to keep friends waiting, and riding hard across the open sea was the fastest way to close the distance. But the unintentional effect was always the same: he was impossible to look away from, and effortlessly magnificent. No wonder women of practically every race found him impossible to resist.

Aige watched him come, and said something unexpected. "Gareth... How strange. There's a curse on him."

"A curse?" Ambrose extended his senses carefully. He found nothing out of the ordinary.

Aige hesitated. "It's more of an impression. He feels like a warrior wrapped in chains, like something is holding him in place while he strains against it. But this is the first time I've focused on him at such close proximity. It may be a false impression."

Ambrose looked at the figure parting the sea toward them. Bound by chains and still looking like that—he couldn't begin to imagine what would be left of the world if those chains ever came off.

Before he could put the thought into words, Gareth had already pulled his mount to a halt. The eight-legged horse skidded across the surface of the water for an impressive distance before coming to a stop directly in front of the ghost ship.

"Ha! Good to see you, old friend, and Senior Aige, welcome, welcome! Welcome to the Island of Eternal Rest."

"Gareth," Ambrose said, "why are you wearing a helmet again?"

The Dullahan had no head, but today, a heavy black helmet sat where a head should have been. He had worn one before to conceal his identity, but there was no reason for disguise here on his own territory.

Gareth sighed with the air of a man who had been through this conversation already. "Alabastra says it looks better. The githark lot have been showing up near the island regularly, and she wants me to maintain a certain style."

Ambrose shook his head in solidarity. "What's wrong with being a Dullahan? Are you devoid of dignity just because you're headless? That's absurdly narrow-minded."

Aige gave him a look. Ambrose hurriedly added, "Though there's something to it, I suppose. Women do tend to have a sharper eye for these things. Gareth, honestly, the helmet suits you."

Milena, standing to one side, had her notebook out and was writing at speed.

Aige looked between the three of them with an expression she couldn't quite resolve. Somehow, adding Gareth to the conversation had made everything stranger rather than less.

After a brief exchange of pleasantries, Gareth led the ghost ship toward the Island of Eternal Rest, which that housed the Dragon Graveyard proper. As they drew nearer, the concentration of dark energy in the air increased steadily, pressing against Ambrose's senses like a slow tide.

By the time they reached the shore, a massive shadow had appeared at the center of the island and was moving toward them.

A great bone dragon, banking down from altitude, was bearing directly for the ship.

Gareth pointed upward with a look of mild awkwardness. "That's Alabastra's father, Sephris, lord of the island."

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!