Lich for Hire

Alfredo had once been an ambitious young man.

His family boasted a long martial tradition. His father, Lorencos, was a legendary paladin, and Alfredo, as the only son, had been carefully trained by his father from childhood.

Alfredo wasn't lacking in talent, and he applied himself diligently. He stood out among his peers.

He wouldn't have been chosen to guard Roger Ángelo otherwise.

His position as a personal guard was the same role his father Lorencos had once held. The general's regard for Alfredo was clear; it was all but explicit that Alfredo would inherit his father's role in time and be given considerable opportunities even if he never became a legend.

Until the day Ambrose came to Lavarun, Alfredo had been a young man brimming with ambition.

Then came the sudden undead curse.

Alfredo had felt his body slowly undergo necrosis.

The transformation hadn't been particularly painful, and was far less so than the wounds he routinely sustained while training. But the fear it brought was a hundred times greater.

Alfredo wasn't afraid of death itself. He was afraid of falling to Hell after death.

It was a fear no follower of any deity could escape.

Only the truly devout were granted divine permission to enter their deity's divine realm after death. The others all fell to Hell.

Fortunately, the Lord of Dawn was a generous god. The vast majority of paladins who didn't break their oaths could expect to enter his realm without difficulty.

This wasn't wishful thinking. Priests of the Holy Light could summon heroic spirits from the divine realm to fight alongside them, and many of those summoned spirits had been paladins who never became legends. The bar for entry wasn't that high.

Alfredo had always believed he was destined for the divine realm. He was a paladin who lived by his oath, after all. More than that, he had earned considerable merit for Lyon.

He had campaigned alongside the Leonine General and had fought against dwarven Ironguards, orc legions, innumerable goblins and gnolls, and other evil monsters besides. He had even brought down a fully grown ogre on his own.

Alfredo had been confident about his chances in the afterlife.

That was why he had been fearless. He had thrown himself into every battle without hesitation—until he became one of the undead.

The curse was vicious beyond measure. It had turned a paladin into an undead, with no possibility of resistance.

And the undead always fell to Hell.

By the time he was sent to the imperial capital, Alfredo's transformation had completed before he could meet with the emperor.

He could feel his body as a mass of dead flesh. His soul was being eaten away by the dark power. He felt a hunger for the comrades escorting him, an urge to bite open their throats and drink their blood in great gulps.

Alfredo had fought down that urge with everything he had. In the end, the Draconic Armaments had reversed time and restored him to human form.

But he carried the memory of what it had been like to be undead. At the moment of his actual death, he had not seen the welcoming light of the divine realm.

At first, Alfredo had assumed it was because the undead transformation prevented his ascension to the Lord of Dawn's realm. Now that he had been restored, surely everything would return to normal. Surely he could still go to the realm.

But self-reassurance accomplished little. No matter how he tried to convince himself, the fear of death lingered.

And because of that fear, he found his power beginning to fade.

A paladin's strength came from conviction. Once fear and uncertainty took root, the Holy Light withdrew along with them.

He was on the verge of breaking his oath when he encountered a young man even younger than himself. Alfredo nearly drew his sword on sight.

The young man was none other than Allen Watson, rumored traitor to the Lyon Empire.

Alfredo knew he should attack and call out for help. It was the dead of night, and he had wandered out of the city to chop down trees in solitary frustration.

If he called on holy light, the warning signal would draw Lyon's army from the city, and they would come for him.

But try as he might, he couldn't summon a single spark.

Alfredo panicked. He had just escaped death; it seemed he wouldn't be quite so lucky again.

Allen Watson was the empire's youngest legend. Whether or not he was a traitor didn't matter. He could kill Alfredo with a flick of his hand.

Alfredo's legs went weak with fear. He didn't even have the strength to flee.

But though Alfredo was bracing himself to die, the traitor didn't draw his sword. Instead, he steadied Alfredo on his feet and called on holy light to dispel his fear.

He was employing the Aura of Courage. Alfredo recognized it well: he liked to activate that aura himself at the start of every battle, then lead his comrades into a charge.

He had never imagined he would need his own fears dispelled.

Allen's holy light felt like daybreak. It left Alfredo warm and at ease. Could a man with this kind of power really have betrayed the empire?

Allen spoke to him courteously, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to eavesdrop. You just seemed to be in some distress."

Alfredo flushed with shame. He had nearly wet himself in fright a moment ago, a humiliation for any paladin.

"I was just... that is... passing through..." he stammered.

Allen smiled. "I see your oath doesn't require honesty."

"Enough, Allen Watson. What are you doing here? You must have some scheme in mind if you're trying to sneak into Lavarun!"

Alfredo did his best to sound forceful, but anyone could hear the tremor under the bluster.

Allen made no attempt to conceal his purpose. "I'm here looking for like-minded people. You're Alfredo Oras, aren't you? I think I know you. You took your paladin oath at the imperial cathedral before I did."

Taking the oath in the imperial capital was a privilege granted to Lyon's noble heirs. Only those of distinguished birth were permitted to swear their oaths in the cathedral of the Lord of Dawn. The shared experience didn't make Alfredo any happier. Even oaths taken in the imperial capital were hierarchical in nature.

Allen's father was the High Inquisitor, so Allen had taken his oath in the main sanctuary, before the great statue of the Lord of Dawn. Alfredo had been relegated to a smaller prayer chamber, before a smaller statue.

The official explanation was that there were too many paladins for one hall to accommodate. The actual reason was the difference in their station, which Alfredo was acutely aware of.

Alfredo assumed Allen was trying to brag by bringing it up now.

But Allen didn't pursue the topic. As though he genuinely had only meant to find common ground, he asked, "Alfredo, what do you make of Lyon as it stands today?"

Alfredo froze. He hadn't expected that question.

Even from a traitor, the question was startlingly direct.

Without hesitation, Alfredo declared his complete satisfaction with the Lyon Empire. He praised the empire and the Lord of Dawn at length.

Allen didn't argue. He simply watched Alfredo in silence until Alfredo trailed off in awkwardness.

"Alfredo, why have you stopped? Aren't there many more verses of praise from the dawn rituals?"

Alfredo fell silent. He didn't know why. He could ordinarily recite those verses for hours, but tonight the words ran out partway through. In the end, he could only manage, "You know them too. There's no point in my reciting them."

What happened after that, Alfredo couldn't remember clearly.

He vaguely recalled sitting with Allen in the woods through the night. Allen had caught two rabbits, and the two of them had grilled them on the spot.

Alfredo couldn't remember what the rabbits had tasted like. He only remembered the first rays of dawn breaking through the canopy and falling on Allen. Allen, robed in the light of dawn, radiated a sacred presence from head to toe. The panic that had churned in Alfredo all night quieted at last.

Then he found himself asking, "Do you think... when we die, will we go to the divine realm?"

Allen shook his head. "I don't know. But probably not."

"Why?" Alfredo demanded, agitated. "I've earned merit for Lyon. I've done so much. Why wouldn't I be permitted into the divine realm? I've kept my oath. I never slackened. Why should I fall to Hell?"

Allen sighed. "Alfredo, it isn't just you. I'm going to Hell too, because I haven't yet made amends for my own crimes."

"You're a traitor. Of course you'll fall to Hell. How can it be the same for me?" Alfredo gripped the hilt of his sword in fury, barely resisting the temptation to draw it.

Allen ignored the budding hostility. "Have you considered that the wars we've fought in were all unjust? The Lord of Dawn taught us to retain our hope. He never taught us to bring despair to others. I fought in the orc mountains. I watched orcs being slaughtered with my own eyes. They had parents. They had wives and children. They had friends. What was our justification for slaughtering them?"

Alfredo answered without thinking. "We were exacting righteous vengeance. The orc kingdom is our ancestral enemy."

"Ancestral enemy? Who started that grudge? Do you know when Lyon's enmity with the orcs began, or why? Even if it's a tangled history we can't unwind, does the war have to extend to children?

"Alfredo, you are a follower of the Leonine General. You've participated in his massacres, haven't you? I've heard about your record. When you took dwarven cities, the only survivors were infants too young to speak. Has the sword in your hand cut down helpless women and children?"

"No, those were... those were..."

Alfredo wanted to say that he had only been responsible for the frontline charge, and that the massacres of the cities had been carried out by the lower-ranking soldiers afterward. The general's personal guards weren't asked to do that work themselves.

But he was still a paladin, and he couldn't bring himself to mouth that kind of self-deception.

In war, he and the other Lyon forces were part of a single entity. No matter who had killed the women and children, the blood reached his blade just the same.

In the past, Alfredo would have scoffed at every word Allen was saying. The Lyon Empire never erred. Every foreign war was just.

As a paladin, he had taken pride in Lyon and refused to allow that brilliance the slightest blemish. Anyone who said otherwise was hauled before the Tribunal. Whatever the massacres had been, Alfredo had a hundred ways to convince others, and himself, of their necessity. The general had taught him personally, after all.

But there was no longer any holy light within his body.

Alfredo was no longer a paladin sustained by holy light. He was an ordinary man, no different from any other.

As for Allen—holy light filled Allen so abundantly that Alfredo could feel it with his eyes closed.

If a traitor could carry that kind of power, did that mean Alfredo was the one who had been wrong all along? Had he lost his holy light not only because he had been turned into an undead, but because his actions themselves had been a betrayal of the Light?

It wasn't unreasonable that Alfredo's transformation came so quickly. Losing his power had pushed his mind to the brink of collapse.

The fervor he had felt before was now fear in equal measure.

He didn't want to fall to Hell. If what Allen said was true, hadn't Alfredo committed grievous wrongs?

Just as Alfredo was about to ask Allen for help, his father Lorencos appeared. The white-haired paladin said nothing. He didn't even comfort his shaken son. He drew his sword on Allen.

The fight was less spectacular than one might expect. Both legendary paladins covered their blades with only the faintest sheen of holy light, and the duel became a contest of pure swordsmanship.

Both could have unleashed pillars of holy light reaching into the heavens, but each was holding his power in reserve.

Even so, the exchange left Alfredo dizzy. He understood at that moment that, even at full strength, he wouldn't have lasted two seconds against Allen. The gap between them was that large.

The old man and the young man fought for ten minutes before Allen's blade came to rest against Lorencos's throat. Lorencos's blade had stopped half an inch short of Allen's chest.

Lorencos let his sword fall and said wearily, "You've won."

There was no triumph on Allen's face. He picked up Lorencos's sword and pressed it back into his hand.

"If we had been fighting to the death, even with my blade at your throat, you would have had the strength to drive yours through my heart. That slim margin doesn't mean victory."

Lorencos glanced at Allen's youthful face. "Why are you here?"

Allen answered firmly, "I want to stop this war. I failed to stop Lyon's invasion of the orc kingdom. I became complicit in it. This time, I want to stop Lyon's invasion of the Unholy Kingdom."

Lorencos answered with scorn. "By yourself? You can beat me, but can you beat Lyon's armies?"

"Not by myself, certainly. That's why I'm looking for allies. Sir, you haven't summoned the Lavarun garrison to capture me. You also want to join me, don't you? You've been watching us all night. You should have a clear sense of where I stand."

"All night? Father, you were there the whole time?" Alfredo couldn't imagine that his father had been watching from the side throughout.

Lorencos sighed. "I'm your father. Do you think I wouldn't know what's on your mind? I followed you the moment you left. Alfredo, I'm the one who brought this on you. The curse afflicting you is the punishment for what I've done. The gods are punishing me through you."

Alfredo's eyes widened. To think that was how his father understood the situation...

Was the undead curse truly a punishment?

Allen's mouth opened slightly. He looked uncomfortable. He didn't know the details, but it wasn't hard to guess that the curse was Ambrose's work. Ambrose had been here. This kind of trick was surely his, without question.

Allen wanted to explain, but Lorencos had already begun a solemn confession.

"Alfredo, as a follower of the general, I've taken too many lives. I no longer remember how many fell to my sword, or whether they were innocent, or whether they were guiltless. I asked myself those questions over and over, but I let myself believe that, wherever the Holy Light pointed, our actions were just.

"I was wrong. The curse on you is my punishment, and yours. Have you noticed? Everyone who has been turned undead participated in the massacres firsthand. Those who didn't have been entirely unaffected."

Allen shut his mouth. Surely it can't be that convenient... or did the lich do this on purpose?

Allen vacillated. He decided not to assign blame to Ambrose. What if he were wronging an innocent lich?

In any event, this seemed to be a stroke of luck.

Allen looked at the weeping Lorencos, then at Alfredo, and thought to himself, "Well, that's two allies down."