Lich for Hire

The stench told Ambrose everything: the attack employed concentrated and deliberately prepared ixiray blood. If Aige had chosen to dive deeper, they would have fallen directly into the enemy's trap.

Contact with that specially treated demonic blood would almost certainly have contaminated Aige, corrupting her from the inside.

Still, even though they had headed for the surface, they weren't out of danger just yet. The ixiray, apparently understanding they couldn't damage the ghost ship through direct attacks, had shifted to a different approach. They were tearing each other apart.

Their mouths and barbed tentacles turned against their own kind. The blood that spilled—demonic, toxic, and deeply foul—spread through the water and turned the surrounding ocean the color of rust.

Below, a pressurized column of poisoned blood surged upward. Above was a spreading cloud of the same, released by the ixiray's self-destruction. The two fronts converged, threading through the water like a net of muscle and corruption, wrapping steadily around the ghost ship.

There was nowhere to go.

All of a sudden, the ghost ship vanished.

The ixiray froze in shock. They were intelligent creatures. Though unable to establish a civilization at the bottom of the ocean, and constrained by an environment that made tools and architecture largely impossible, they possessed minds and feelings.

The disappearance of the ship made no sense to them. How had it simply ceased to exist.

Meanwhile, the ghost ship slipped sideways through the swarm of ixiray at an angle, passed through the gap between two ixiray clusters that hadn't participated in the sacrificial attack, and emerged from the other side.

Aige's disappearance had been nothing more than an illusion. Ambrose had deployed Leyla's True Illusion to make Aige's already semi-transparent form completely invisible.

The technique would ordinarily suffer a significant limitation in underwater environments: illusions couldn't neutralize water pressure or current, and ocean creatures relied on those sensory channels far more than their eyes. Against most underwater opponents, concealment through illusion was inadequate.

But in her phased state, Aige naturally produced no disturbance in the water around her, which meant that the illusion couldn't be detected regardless. The concealment was flawless.

The ixiray's sacrificial ploy had failed, and the ghost ship passed straight through their encirclement.

"Your instincts were right," Aige said, watching the corrupted water recede behind them. She was growing more and more envious of Ambrose's skills. "Diviners really are overpowered. No wonder they're so rare. A few more of you, and you'd turn the whole world upside down."

Ambrose smiled. "Everything comes with a cost. I've survived up till now because Fate's been inclined to keep me alive. If Fate decided otherwise, no amount of intuition would change the outcome."

Most people would have taken that as false modesty, but it was the honest truth.

"What do we do now?" Aige asked. "Do we deal with the ixiray and flush out whoever's behind this?"

She noticed that she had been deferring to Ambrose consistently after all these years operating independently. This was the first time she had genuinely handed her decision-making to someone else. The members of the Elegiac Society had reached an unspoken consensus: when it mattered, Ambrose's answers were always the right ones.

This time, though, he shook his head. "The ixiray are expendable troops. Destroying them won't accomplish anything. And I don't think this ambush was aimed at you."

"You mean, this ambush was against you?" Aige asked.

"That's my working theory. I need to verify it, which means we should split up."

Gareth immediately said, "Out of the question. If someone's specifically targeting you, we're not leaving you alone."

Milena, who had been quietly taking notes, looked up. "Father, I'm going with you!"

"There's no real danger," Ambrose said. "You've seen the illusions I can produce. Even deities have been fooled by it. If I need to run, I can. Furthermore, I'm a lich. My phylactery is somewhere very secure. Our priority right now is getting Sephris back, and my continued presence here will only slow you down."

Gareth didn't like Ambrose's logic, but he couldn't argue against it. Rescuing Sephris was the top priority. Everything else could wait.

Milena, however, was unmovable. "Father, I must go with you!"

She had no intention of allowing her father to face danger alone.

"Fine. Come along, then." Ambrose had been half-planning to have her shadow Gareth for the learning experience, but there were worse outcomes. He turned to Gareth. "One piece of advice: don't bring your wife into battle. When you cut through Lyon all those years ago, it wasn't just your fists that got you through. You need to be able to concentrate entirely on your surroundings. If Alabastra's beside you, you'll be too focused on protecting her instead."

Gareth grimaced. "What happened earlier won't happen again."

Years of peace without a real opponent had dulled his instincts.

Still, he was a born fighter, and he would be able to recover quickly.

Ambrose reached into his personal storage and produced a suit of armor, which he handed to Gareth. "This is modified infernal knight armor. It's not as good as what you had before, but it's capable of flight..."

He walked Gareth through the operation of the hellfire armor, then distributed magic mirrors to everyone present.

Once Aige broke the surface, Ambrose and Milena launched from the deck on their jetpacks.

Within moments, they had vanished over the horizon as twin white streaks.

Once they disappeared, Aige turned to Gareth. "He's the youngest member of the Elegiac Society, but he was the one who saved all of us. It's time we stopped embarrassing ourselves, don't you think?"

Gareth felt the same way. He looked at Alabastra. "Don't participate in the fighting directly. Same as always, I just need you to keep an escape route open for us. Everything else, I can handle."

The hellfire armor settled over him as he palmed his blackflame blade. As he stood at the prow of the ship, Gareth found himself thinking about his Lyon days.

It was time to get serious again. Anything less would be an insult to the blade, which had been through thick and thin with him.

Alabastra wanted to argue, but she knew that Gareth was right. It was what the situation called for. "I promise," she said. "I'll stay hidden and make sure there's a way out. Always."

Aige watched the two of them and felt a sudden longing. She had been alone for far too long, without anyone to consult. Was there perhaps another ghost ship out there that she would be interested in?

......

Meanwhile, Ambrose and Milena flew hard in the opposite direction.

He wasn't heading home, naturally; he just needed to find a place to land and prepare for what was coming.

Within minutes, it was clear that the ixiray were specifically tracking him. As he pulled away, the ixiray erupted from the surface and gave chase, dozens of the creatures launching themselves into the air in the direction he had gone. The jetpack easily outpaced them, and they quickly fell behind.

Ambrose wasn't in a hurry to escape. First, he needed to understand how they were locating him. The possibilities were limited, but one was something he couldn't do anything about.

He needed somewhere to make preparations.

For most people, finding a specific piece of land in open ocean would have been an exercise in futility. Ambrose, legendary diviner that he was, managed it within a hundred kilometers of flight.

A small island came into view, one with perhaps two thousand square meters of surface above the waterline. It was barely enough room for a modest castle, but this was the best of his options.

As he and Milena descended, he immediately got to work.

He tasked Milena with carrying out a collection of metal pieces from his extradimensional storage, something that looked like an elaborate three-dimensional puzzle.

Under Ambrose's direction, she assembled them piece by piece. After some time, a simple teleportation array stood on the stone.

"Father, this connects to the Umbral Depths, doesn't it? Are we going home?"

Ambrose shook his head. "Of course not."

Milena looked at the array, puzzled. "Then what's it for?"

"Reinforcements."

The array lit up. Black Rose stepped through, followed by a unit of death knights.

"Mother!" Milena ran to her side. It was the first time she had gone so far from the Umbral Depths, and she was starting to miss home.

Black Rose, however, was entirely focused on Ambrose. "I came as soon as I got your message. What's happening?"

Ambrose had messaged her through the Necromantic Codex. She had dropped everything immediately to bring her best escort with her.

Ambrose clacked his jaw wryly. "What else? Someone I've offended decided it was time to settle the score. It's fine. I've had enough practice by now that it barely registers."

The list of people who wanted Ambrose dead could have filled a phone book. He had long since stopped being surprised by any additions to it.

"What do you need from me?" Black Rose asked.

"I need to turn this island into a defensive position. Let's fight here. I'll need a little time—I have to go and have a conversation with the masterminds behind this."

"The masterminds?" Black Rose caught his use of the plural. Several goddesses immediately surfaced in her mind.

As it turned out, she was right. Ambrose turned to the air and began to speak: a prayer, slow and deliberate, to call upon the Dark Goddess Shara.

A moment later, a tendril of dense mist rose from around him and resolved into the shape of a tall woman.

Shara smiled. "Always perceptive, aren't you? Did you already know I was involved?"

Ambrose sighed. "You're the only one who can find me anywhere, at any time. Let's not waste each other's time. Which goddesses are involved this time, and how many of them?"

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