Lich for Hire

This wasn't the first time Ambrose had stood before a dragon of this scale. The time dragon conjured by the Draconic Armaments had been roughly comparable in size.

But where a living dragon was dense with mass and muscle, a bone dragon, having shed all of that, was leaner in a sense, though "leaner" was a relative term when even a single claw was larger than Ambrose's entire body.

He studied the enormous skeleton carefully and noted several things. The bones were sheathed in a faint iridescent shimmer, its colors shifting constantly like light through a prism. And the right wing bore a deep wound nearly clean through the joint, the kind of cut that would have severed the wing entirely if it had gone a fraction further.

An iridescent dragon, then, ancient enough to have lived through the era of the Dragon Tyrant, judging by the scale of it. And that wound on the wing was almost certainly a memento from the heroes of that uprising.

An iridescent dragon!

Dragons of time, iridescence, and force were known as the three legendary dragon breeds. Every member of those breeds was a legend from birth, without exception/

Iridescent dragons were born with mastery over light itself. They were exceptional spellcasters by any measure, capable of bending light to create illusions, concealing their massive bodies with perfect invisibility, and performing planar jumps that took them out of the material plane entirely to evade harm.

Their magical resistance was extreme, and their spellcasting ability was the strongest of the three legendary breeds. A single iridescent dragon whelp was the rough equivalent of an entire advanced mage corps.

The heroes of that age must have been genuinely formidable to have brought something like this down.

Sephris, lord of the Dragon Graveyard, lowered his vast skull and regarded the ghost ship with eyes that burned with soulfire. His gaze moved across the deck in a slow sweep before settling on Aige.

"Mistressof the Silent Sea." The voice that came from the bone dragon was low and measured. "Your visit is unexpected. I hope you haven't brought conflict to the Island of Eternal Rest."

Aige didn't reply directly. She stepped aside and gestured toward Ambrose, addressing Sephris as she did. "Lord Sephris, I am only a ship. He is the true guest here."

Sephris turned his head. He looked at Ambrose with something adjacent to disdain. "A lich... I assumed it was one of your crew." There was a pause. "Little skeleton, who might you be?"

Ambrose quietly noted Sephris' pretense. A bone dragon had no microexpressions to read, but Ambrose's name had surely spread throughout the world after the battle of the Unholy Kingdom.

A diviner who had exiled an entire kingdom in one fell swoop commanded a certain baseline of respect from anyone. The lord of the Dragon Graveyard was no exception.

So why the pretense of not recognizing him?

A show of dominance? Or something more... Ambrose glanced at Gareth. Sure enough, the Dullahan was making careful, quiet gestures from behind Sephris's eyeline: bear with it, I owe you one.

That told him everything.

Gareth's relationship with Sephris was different from Aige's. Aige was a powerful neighbor, the formidable and well-known mistress of the Silent Sea. She commanded a different kind of respect. Ambrose, beyond his identities as a lich and a diviner, occupied a third role in this old dragon's mind: the disreputable company his son-in-law had taken up with after running away from home.

He nearly laughed. To think the lord of the Dragon Graveyard would be nursing wounded pride over something like that!

That said, considering Alabastra's disposition, perhaps this entire family of undead simply possessed an excess of feeling.

"Lord Sephris, a trifling figure like myself is hardly worth your attention. But we haven't come today only to catch up with Gareth. We'd also like to speak with you about the matter of the red dragons of the astral plane and the githarks, if you're willing."

He gave Gareth the grace of not rising to the bait and cut directly to the chase instead.

The effect was immediate. Sephris's whole manner shifted. "What business is that of yours?"

"None of mine, originally. But I understand from Gareth that the bone dragon clan has been on the receiving end of some unwanted attention from the astral dragons. Lord Sephris, the conflicts between the bone dragons and other dragon clans don't concern me. Whether the githarks intend to conquer this world or destroy it is not something that troubles the undead greatly either way—"

Ambrose rose from the deck and floated upward until he was level with Sephris's burning eyes. He held the old dragon's gaze, and when he spoke again, his voice carried no uncertainty whatsoever. "But we cannot allow anyone to treat members of the Elegiac Society with contempt. Your daughter and Gareth are both members of this Society. They have both stood with me when it counted. I am here today to reciprocate their favor."

Sephris turned his head and fixed Gareth with a look that could have stripped scales from a living dragon.

The man who had just come galloping across the open ocean like a force of nature scratched the back of his helmet and had the decency to look sheepish. "Father, you know how it is. I can't let her be treated that way."

"You killed more than a dozen red dragons and ten thousand githarks," Sephris said, his voice straining with fury. "Was that not sufficient?"

Sephris had only himself to blame, and he knew it. He should never have let Alabastra be the one to open negotiations with the githarks. He had been moments away from intervening when things went past the point of recovery.

Gareth had ridden into the middle of the dragon formation with Alabastra, and what followed had been brief and catastrophic for the other side. The astral dragons had no answer for Gareth. His chain-blade had cut through them like they weren't there, and scales and wings had rained down in pieces.

The equipment Gareth carried had been forged from the rarest materials the Dragon Graveyard had to offer; Sephris knew better than anyone what it was capable of. The githarks had been idiots to provoke him.

When Gareth lost his composure, even every bone dragon on the island together couldn't have restrained him.

Sephris had hoped, afterward, that the confrontation would effectively settle the matter. Mutual avoidance with no further contact was manageable. He had not anticipated that Gareth would then summon the rest of the Elegiac Society.

The Elegiac Society... Few knew of it, but Sephris did.

When Alabastra had transformed into a bone dragon and become a draconic lich, an old man had appeared without warning inside the Dragon Graveyard and placed a copy of the Necromantic Codex beside her.

The intrusion had alarmed Sephris deeply. The island's magical defenses were extensive and layered. The idea of an unknown individual passing through them undetected, especially into the most critically guarded area in the midst of a transformation, should have been impossible.

His first instinct had been to incinerate the man with dragonbreath on the spot. But the moment he had met the old man's eyes, he had found himself completely unable to move. Every bone in his body locked in place as if bound by countless invisible chains.

The old man had spoken calmly. "No need for alarm. I mean your daughter no harm. I am the president of the Elegiac Society, and I have come to extend an invitation to her. The disturbance to the Dragon Graveyard is my fault. I have been asleep for too long and my movements are not what they once were. A small gift, with my apologies."

He had left a plain-looking ring and departed.

Only after the old man had gone did Sephris find he could move again.

He had accepted Alabastra's membership in the Elegiac Society without much choice in the matter, and had spent the years since trying to learn more about its mysterious president.

He had found nothing.

Even the Necromantic Codex was impenetrable to him. Only those chosen could read it; anyone else would only see blank pages.

What he knew of the Society, he had pieced together from Alabastra's accounts. There were few members, each of them apparently formidable and difficult to trace, and their president's power defied any reasonable estimate.

Then Alabastra had received a distress signal through the Codex from Gareth, newly transformed into a Dullahan, hunted by Lyon after his revenge, barely understanding what he had become. The Codex had appeared at his side when the transformation completed. That was all he knew.

Alabastra had responded.

Bone dragons were not, technically, part of the dragon clans as the old covenant defined them, so the covenant's restrictions on entering the continent didn't fully apply.

Alabastra had used the Umbral Depths as a staging ground, chained several teleportations together, and emerged at the border between Lyon and the desert kingdom.

She had expected Gareth to be dead before she arrived. This was Lyon, one of the most hostile environments for an undead to exist in anywhere on the continent.

Instead, Gareth had cut his way out. The path he had taken was erratic, and the loss of life on Lyon's side was considerable. By the time he staggered into the golden desert with the Holy Light at his heels, his reserves of dark energy were nearly spent.

The pursuing paladins had hesitated at the border. Crossing into another kingdom's territory wasn't to be taken lightly, even for them. During that gap, Alabastra had moved from concealment and brought him back to the Dragon Graveyard.

The first real use of her legendary boon had, surprisingly, been to save someone else's life.

Just like that, another member of the Elegiac Society arrived in the Dragon Graveyard.

Sephris regretted it. He should never have agreed to let Gareth marry Alabastra. The undead getting married was a nonsensical idea to begin with. But somehow, impossibly, genuine feeling had developed between them, and when it became clear that Alabastra would follow Gareth whether or not Sephris consented, he had relented and grudgingly accepted his son-in-law.

Gareth was reasonably well-behaved, most of the time. Sephris had not foreseen anything like this visit. These were no mere figures Gareth had brought to the island. The mistress of the Silent Sea was a long-standing neighbor, and Sephris had a clear sense of what Aige was capable of. The lich, whose name had been spreading rapidly since the battle, added a distinct flair. Between the two of them, this looked very much like an attempt to remove the githark presence entirely.

Ambrose saw through Sephris's hesitation. "Lord Sephris, please allow me a question. Our quarrel with the githarks shouldn't concern the Dragon Graveyard one way or another, yet you seem to have reservations. If there's something you haven't said, perhaps now would be a good time."

Sephris exhaled, a long, heavy sound, like wind through old stone. "You've probably already worked it out. The githarks and the astral dragons are here to break the curse on the dragon clans. If you move against them, you are cutting off the dragons' only path home. I have become undead, yes, but I still hope to see my kindred freed from this exile, to return to where they belong."

Ambrose felt a quiet satisfaction settle over him. This was exactly what he had been waiting for.

"Then perhaps, Lord Sephris, you could tell me what the curse actually entails, and what the githarks are proposing to do about it. There may well be a solution that serves everyone."

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