Lich for Hire

The drow reemployment initiative had been going slowly. The main obstacle was that every last one of them kept trying to escape.

Releasing them for actual work in their current state would be a mistake. They would outpace the airships given half a chance, and even a binding magical contract wouldn't prevent creative workarounds.

But their patience was finally paying off.

Catherine's appeal was something no one seemed immune to. Even the drow who hadn't managed to reform their inner nature had developed something resembling attachment to her—not necessarily pure, but sufficient. They were willing to work for her. That was what mattered.

This was entirely reasonable and workable. What god wasn't loved by their followers? Even worship born of impure motives was fine: the Spider Queen and Mystrix both operated that way. Whether to actually sleep with a devotee was simply a matter of personal preference.

Ambrose privately suspected Catherine was the sort who would remain chaste for eternity, which was entirely in keeping with elven sensibility.

In any case, the drow were now marginally functional, and they proved that the approach had been sound. Catherine could charm even the wicked.

Ambrose took Constance and Catherine to his airship manufacturing facility.

He walked Constance through the specifications of the transport vessels and the details of the operation.

The first production run was complete. There were ten ships in total, the smallest at twenty-five meters long and five meters wide, and the largest at a hundred and ten meters long and sixteen meters wide.

Being airships, their cargo capacity was lower than sea vessels. The maximum load was ten thousand tons, the minimum a hundred.

But speed was another matter entirely. The slowest of the ships could sustain three hundred kilometers per hour; the fastest of the smaller models could reach five hundred.

At those speeds, cross-border trade could be completed within a single day.

The cost was lower than sea freight, and considerably lower at that.

The Umbral Depths produced magical gemstones in essentially unlimited supply, available at below-cost prices.

Used as power sources, they reduced what would otherwise be the largest operational expense to something negligible.

Ambrose felt a slight pang of guilt about this. He had simply handed the living mercury slimes over to Black Rose along with their cultivation method.

With the mineral resources available in the Umbral Depths, the slimes were able to reproduce faster than they had ever done with Ambrose.

He brought Catherine and Constance to the helm and gave the crystal sphere at the center a light tap. A wisp of smoke rose from it and took the form of a soul.

"Esteemed master, Seagull One awaits your command."

The transport vessels were entirely controlled by custom-built souls housed in the helm. The captain could issue spoken commands at any time. There was no training required, nor any mechanical complexity to master.

These specialized souls had considerable intelligence. They were, by any measure, the most capable pilots available.

Setting aside cargo handlers and security, the ship needed nothing more than a captain to operate.

To prevent undead energy from contaminating the cargo, the helm had been fitted with dedicated magical shielding. Ambrose gave the two elves a brief overview and handed operational authority to Constance.

"This—this is a wraith?"

The drow Constance had had limited exposure to the outside world and had never seen anything quite like this... undead?

Ambrose didn't explain. A certain degree of mystery was useful for keeping subordinates in line.

But even Catherine widened her eyes. "What exactly is this? Has alchemy really advanced this far?"

For an elven queen, she seemed rather provincial at the moment.

"It's complicated. I'll explain properly another time."

He introduced the ship's features one by one. When he came to the magic mirror with its cross-planar communication capability, Constance showed no reaction at all.

The young drow had no idea what she was looking at. The mirror's technical sophistication exceeded anything else on the vessel by a wide margin.

"Right. The ship is yours. Catherine, you have the full plan. Follow it and you'll be fine."

Catherine hesitated. "You're leaving everything to me? You trust me with something this significant?"

She had no experience as a merchant, but she had been a queen. She understood how lucrative exclusive freight logistics could be.

The idea that the lich would hand something this valuable over to her didn't feel real.

"You need to stand on your own eventually," Ambrose said. "The task the elven gods gave you is yours to complete, not mine. If I handle everything for you, none of it would mean a thing."

Catherine was the one who would become a goddess, not him. If he managed everything on her behalf, she would hardly be getting any devotion.

"But I'm not confident I can do this."

Catherine had already failed once before, nearly bringing ruin to the entire elven race. That failure had stripped her of her confidence. Without Ambrose's promise to help her with her divine task, she would have refused the responsibility from the start.

"Don't underestimate yourself," Ambrose said. "You've done well. Constance spoke up for you. Isn't that worth anything?"

Getting a drow to act in someone else's interest, even in a small way, was an achievement worth recording in the history books.

The praise brought a faint flush to Catherine's face.

"I'll do my best," she said.

Constance stood to one side and watched the exchange with growing suspicion.

An elven queen and a lich? Surely not. Even the drow weren't so promiscuous. The lich had to be deceiving the elf queen—that was the only explanation that made sense.

Ambrose paid Constance no attention whatsoever. What the drow imagined didn't particularly concern him.

With the transport operation handed off to Catherine, Ambrose returned to his laboratory and turned back to the situation with the dragons. If possible, he wanted to prevent the dragon clans from returning at all. Anything that disrupted commerce was a problem worth addressing.

A divination might at least yield some leads.

He was about to summon his dice of fate when he noticed new activity in the Necromantic Codex.

The group chat was particularly lively. Even a perpetual lurker like Mute had joined the conversation.

The topic: the overseas territories appeared to be on the verge of war.

[Mute: The merfolk are unifying. Sea hags, megasharks, and the like—the balance of order in the seas is crumbling.]

[Human-Hater: How are you getting your information?]

[Mute: From my subordinates, who recently changed their hunting grounds. The merfolk are the largest power in the seas. Different tribes had been warring with each other for years, but those conflicts have been suppressed. Every merfolk race is now united under a single silver trident.]

[Dullahan's Crown: Connected to the astral reds and the githarks, I bet. The dragons can't feed that many mouths, and the githarks have to hunt for themselves. I heard they wiped out several merfolk settlements and caused significant unrest.]

Ambrose read all this and penned a message of his own. [Megaman Tiga: Senior Mute, how close are you to ascending? If a substantial influx of faith is all you need, I may have a proposal worth discussing.]