Lich for Hire

The magic mirror went dark. The exchange with the Unholy Council was over.

The tiflings hadn't agreed on the spot, but Ambrose knew they wouldn't hold out long.

Once they descended to Hell, their worldly wealth would mean nothing. He was offering them a way to convert it into something that might actually matter—and even if the lords of Hell chose not to reduce their punishment in exchange, it was still better than leaving everything behind for nothing.

Sadio Luce in particular had looked barely capable of restraining himself. That man was clearly extraordinarily wealthy.

A thousand gold per soul-coin... If all one and a half million sold, this would be the largest single transaction of Ambrose's life.

In practice, the Unholy Kingdom probably didn't have that much liquid gold. A fair number of them would end up paying in kind.

In other words, Ambrose would likely walk away as the single largest landowner and creditor in the Unholy Kingdom.

The thought was genuinely exciting.

Mr. Misfortune watched Ambrose practically bouncing with satisfaction and couldn't help himself. "You haven't changed at all, have you? Those one and a half million soul-coins are what you owe Tiamat. The moment they descend to Hell, she'll confiscate every last one of them. They're going to hate you for the rest of eternity."

Ambrose laughed. "Let them. If I didn't do something underhanded occasionally, could I really call myself a lich?"

He had, in fact, told Tiamat and Sariel about the scheme when negotiating the terms of payment. He had told them explicitly that the soul-coins would be delivered this way. Both lords of Hell had agreed with considerable enthusiasm.

The reasoning was simple: the lords of Hell enjoyed watching souls arrive in despair. A soul that entered Hell already seething with rage and betrayal was worth more than a calm one.

When these tiflings eventually tried to seek revenge and discovered that they had been swindled by two lords of Hell, the expressions on their faces would be extraordinary.

A pity Ambrose wouldn't be there to see it.

Through this simple scheme, Ambrose was poised to absorb a substantial portion of the Unholy Kingdom's wealth. Mr. Misfortune watched on and shook his head. "If you had stayed here and helped me back then, the kingdom might never have fallen this far."

"If I had stayed here and helped you, you'd probably have found a way to send me to Hell yourself. You don't think I'm much better than those Impure, do you? Honestly, when it comes to ruthlessness, they have some catching up to do."

Mr. Misfortune smiled. "Stop fooling yourself. Everything you've done has actually been about saving the world. I wouldn't be surprised if the Lord of Dawn blessed you one day."

Ambrose could only roll his eyes. Of all the things to bring up! If the Lord of Dawn had shown any interest in him before, he wouldn't have become a lich in the first place. Arthur Lyon had already tried to get him to pray to the Lord of Dawn once; that had been genuinely unnerving.

An elemental incompatibility wasn't something easy to overcome. If the Lord of Dawn so much as glanced at him, the divine radiance would evaporate him on the spot. It wasn't a matter of the god's intent—they were simply incompatible at a fundamental level.

Unless... there were some way to make Ambrose immune to holy light.

His mechanical body offered no such immunity. It had been imbued with the "undead" attribute and was coated with dark magic besides. Holy light would counter it completely. Undead metal could withstand the exposure longer than flesh, but the pain was just as real.

The only genuine path to holy light immunity would be transforming into a heroic spirit or some similarly elevated form.

But that kind of transformation ran entirely on conviction, and Ambrose's mercenary outlook on faith was a reliable path to Hell and nowhere else. Becoming a heroic spirit was off the table.

He didn't dwell on such unsolvable problems. There was work to be done.

"How are your preparations coming along?" he asked Mr. Misfortune. "How much time do you need?"

"Don't worry. I'm more anxious about this than you are. It will be finished in time."

Mr. Misfortune closed his eyes. Countless threads of fate materialized before him, and his hands moved across them in patterns Ambrose couldn't fully follow.

This wasn't Ambrose's path: he had some vague impression of what Mr. Misfortune was doing, but the details and specific effects were known only to Mr. Misfortune.

Still, given what he had already foreseen, presumably things would go as they were meant to.

Ambrose turned to his own work. He had to produce one and a half million soul-coins, and there was nowhere near enough time to do so. He had to seal himself inside his extradimensional space and accelerate time within.

One day outside, one year inside. He worked at that pace without stopping.

The complexity of a soul determined how long it took to create. A standard skeleton soldier's soul needed balance, locomotion, grip, and threat perception, functions that seemed basic but took time to weave together properly.

A specialized soul, by contrast, could be far simpler. The sweeping skeleton Ambrose had once built, for instance, only needed to swing its arms; a separate skeleton pushed it around, so it didn't even need its balance.

The more limited the soul's functionality, the faster and cheaper it was to produce.

A soul with no practical function at all, which existed purely as an undead presence, cost less to produce than a human slave.

The lords of Hell weren't interested in whether a soul could fight or cook. What they valued was its emotional content.

Ambrose could create a soul that was simply relentlessly and stubbornly persistent. Even if the body it was placed in couldn't crawl, it would still thrash around with tremendous conviction.

That kind of soul would be cheap to make and quick to produce.

This was why he had been confident promising Tiamat one and a half million soul-coins. Forging that many complete souls would have taken him a decade. These, though, he could manufacture at scale.

Soul-coins piled up before him in a bevy of emotions: not only persistence, but also hatred, rage, and other extreme emotions. The more intense the feelings sealed inside, the more the lords of Hell valued it.

These were counterfeit currency, in a sense, but made with enough craft that they were worth more than the real thing.

Ambrose worked without rest. The materials stored in his extradimensional space, which Mr. Misfortune had gathered before all this began, ran out faster than expected.

He was preparing a fresh supply when the tifling nobles finally sent their reply.

From Ambrose's perspective, years had passed. For the tiflings, it had only been a few days—days they had spent not only debating whether to cooperate, but also to raise what funds they could.

A thousand gold per soul-coin was a shocking price.

But given their impending descent into Hell, their material wealth was worthless. What could they possibly do with land and businesses when they were mere souls in Hell?

Still, liquidating assets in just a few days was no simple task.

After several days of effort, the thirteen Impure had managed to pool together two hundred million gold, emptying the national treasury in the process. It was enough to purchase two hundred thousand soul-coins.

Through the mirror, Ambrose looked at them and said, "You're a bit short, aren't you? A whole kingdom, and this is all you can squeeze out?"

Domina Lowry kept her voice flat. "Not everything is denominated in gold. A kingdom runs on more than coin. Gold is merely to stabilize prices."

"Fair enough. I haven't run a country. Two hundred million it is—let's start there. I'll give you a set of coordinates. Bring the gold there and take the soul-coins with you as you leave."

He gave them his location, which was within the tifling capital itself.

That gave them pause. They hadn't expected Ambrose to be so audacious as to conduct the transaction on their home ground.

Sadio Luce ground his teeth. "This arrogant little—does he really think we're helpless?"

He had contributed close to fifty million gold himself. Given a few more days, he could have brought another hundred million.

But handing it all over like this sat very badly with him. It was clear that Ambrose was gouging the thirteen Impure for all he could.

"We should consider taking the soul-coins by force," he said. "No matter how capable he is, there's only one of him."

Several others agreed. If the meeting had been elsewhere, a potential ambush would have given them pause. But within their own capital, they would know if anyone had set something up.

As long as they could send in enough elite soldiers, they would be able to eliminate the man and take the soul-coins without offering any payment whatsoever.

And even if their material wealth couldn't be brought to Hell, throwing it away was preferable to letting the man walk away with it.

Just as the Impure were about to decide on betrayal, Domina Lowry interrupted firmly. "There's something I forgot to mention. Master Megaman Tiga is a lich. We might be able to kill him, but can anyone here locate his phylactery?"

The Impure fell silent.

A lich—that changed things. Everyone knew that liches were nearly impossible to permanently destroy. If they failed to find the phylactery and Ambrose simply came back, the deal would be void, and they'd get nothing out of it.

Without these soul-coins, how were they supposed to survive in Hell?

Domina Lowry watched the room go quiet and allowed herself a quiet breath of relief. The revelation that Megaman Tiga was a lich had been enough.

She didn't need to reveal that he was a diviner, and how terrifying that could be. Only someone who had personally experienced the power of fate could understand how utterly helpless a mortal was before it. Small wonder Sariel and Tiamat had accepted one legendary diviner in exchange for an entire kingdom.

Every tifling in the Unholy Kingdom combined wouldn't be worth as much as Mr. Misfortune.

If she had known Mr. Misfortune loved her, she could have taken advantage of him. None of this would have been necessary. The Impure would never have reached this point. Why hadn't that damned coward confessed to her sooner?!

Having quickly come up with, and as quickly abandoned, the idea of betrayal, the Unholy Council sent the gold to the designated location.

They paid two hundred million gold for two hundred thousand soul-coins. At least the lich hadn't cheated them. The quality of the goods was exactly as promised.

Meanwhile, Ambrose summoned the Golden Throne inside his extradimensional space and let it absorb the mountain of gold coins.

With this influx, he would have what he needed for what came next.

Now there was only one thing left: Lyon's invasion.