Lich for Hire

Though Ambrose's next destination was the dragon clans' territory overseas, he wasn't foolish enough to simply show up at their door.

A secret of this magnitude, one that touched on the future of an entire race, wasn't something Alabastra's goodwill could smooth over. If he walked up and asked about it directly, he would be ash before he could finish his question.

Some preparation was in order first.

He would start with Gareth.

Whatever people assumed about Gareth's domestic situation, he was a man who had stashed tens of millions in private savings and walked out on his family. What Alabastra couldn't say, he might.

Ambrose messaged him. [Megaman Tiga: Gareth, has your marital tension eased up lately? Need any relationship advice?]

It took a while before the reply came. [Dullahan's Crown: You're a single skeleton. What could you possibly teach me about getting along with my wife?]

[Megaman Tiga: I may be single right now, but I have several hundred years of romantic experience.]

[Dullahan's Crown: More like several hundred years of one-night stands. If you had even a fraction of actual ability in that department, you wouldn't be single. Lady Rose has practically offered you her entire underground kingdom, and you still haven't noticed.]

Ambrose stared at the message for a moment. What was Gareth going on about? His relationship with Black Rose was a straightforward business arrangement. The undead couldn't normally fall in love. Gareth and Alabastra were the exception, by some mystery Ambrose didn't fully understand.

If Black Rose had any feelings toward him, would she have sent all those drow women over?

And Catherine had been living under his roof for years. If Black Rose had that kind of interest, she would have come and thrown Catherine out long before now.

Poor Gareth. He had his own judgment clouded by love, and was now trying to drag others into the same fog.

Ambrose privately dismissed the notion entirely and replied, [Megaman Tiga: Fair point, I clearly have no talent for this. Tell me about yours instead: have you two been arguing? About what? I'm listening.]

[Dullahan's Crown: There haven't been any arguments. Alabastra has just been very busy lately, so busy she hasn't had time to go hunting for my hidden savings.]

There it was. The opening he had been waiting for.

[Megaman Tiga: Busy with what? What is there for the dragon clans to be busy about? Hatching eggs? Grilling fish?]

He had intended it as a casual probe, but Gareth's reply exceeded his expectations.

[Dullahan's Crown: You must have heard that the red dragons from the astral plane came to our waters—the ones you sent in. Since their arrival, relations between the bone dragons and the other clans have deteriorated badly. Alabastra had to go back and manage the situation.]

[Megaman Tiga: How does that connect to the bone dragons? What quarrel do they have with the astral reds?]

[Dullahan's Crown: Plenty. Those red dragons arrived with a horde of warty creatures in tow, talking about working with the other clans to return to the continent. The bone dragons refused. Old grievances and new ones all came up at once, and we nearly came to blows. The astral reds and their companions kept fanning the flames, so I had to step in and kill a dozen or so of them. That calmed the newcomers down considerably. No more fighting for now, and they're moving to negotiate—which is why Alabastra is occupied.]

Ambrose went quiet for a long moment. Gareth was genuinely something else.

Killed a dozen red dragons from the astral plane in front of the assembled dragon clans? Even assuming the bone dragons hadn't intervened at all, his opponents had numbered more than sixty red dragons and over a hundred thousand githarks. How had he even—perhaps the bone dragon clan had helped.

[Megaman Tiga: You just went ahead and did that? Weren't you worried about objections from the other clans?]

[Dullahan's Crown: They came here and picked a fight with my wife. Since when do I need anyone's permission to teach outsiders a lesson? Did you actually think I was a kept man living in the dragon clans' good graces? Alabastra didn't want to be far from her kin, so I chose to stay on the Isle of Dragons. Those dragons have no authority over me. I've been too quiet for too long. Every stray creature thinks it can strut around in front of me now.]

Right. He had misread the situation entirely. He wasn't a kept husband. He was someone even the dragons kept their distance from.

Ambrose hadn't studied the internal dynamics of the overseas dragons. The dragons had been absent from the continent for so long that, by the time he had arrived in this world, there weren't even many legends left about them. The bone dragons in particular had been a gap in his knowledge.

Gareth filled him in.

The concept of a unified dragon race had never really existed to begin with. Before the Dragon Tyrant was born, the chromatic dragons, the metallic dragons, the time dragons, and the rest had all been effectively separate kingdoms—not merely independent, but largely hostile to one another.

Even the chromatics, under Tiamat's nominal authority, operated in isolation, with no cooperation between them and considerable internal exploitation.

This suited the nature of apex predators. When your only real enemies were your own kind, cross-tribe relations were unlikely to be warm. If a clan of dragons was slaughtered by humans, the others would either ignore it or quietly celebrate.

Then the Dragon Tyrant appeared. A time dragon, among the most powerful of dragon lineages, he imposed absolute dominance on all the others and united them into something resembling a dynasty.

For a time, every intelligent species on the continent was livestock, kept to supply dragons with gold and food, and each dragon held its own city. There was nothing left to fight over. The arrangement suited everyone.

That first great unification ended when Arthur Lyon led the heroes of every race against the dragons and culled their numbers to less than a tenth of what they had been. The survivors knelt before Arthur Lyon and signed a covenant never to return to the continent. Then they fled to the sea and found islands to shelter on.

They were too weakened for old divisions to matter anymore. Different clans lived side by side because they had no other choice, and the old distinctions faded.

To preserve what strength remained, they built the Dragon Graveyard, an island where all dragons would come to die, their bodies transforming into bone dragons rather than simply being lost. It was a radical departure from tradition. Most dragons despised undead, and becoming a bone dragon was widely regarded as a desecration. But without the bone dragons, who would protect the young?

The dragons' first great moment of unity had come from the Dragon Tyrant's dominance. The second had come from desperation.

That arrangement had held for many years, during which time the clans had come to accept the bone dragons as part of their community—until the red dragons from the astral plane arrived. These newcomers had none of that shared history. To them, bone dragons were simply objects of contempt and hostility.

The githarks, meanwhile, had all the diplomatic instincts of a battering ram. They picked a fight with the bone dragon clan almost immediately upon landing.

Theastral dragons came bearing the promise of returning to the continent. The other clans didn't want to lose that opportunity. And so the bone dragons found themselves being offered up as a tribute to the newcomers, a proof of their goodwill.

The githarks had no objection to destroying the bone dragons. With open conflict imminent, Gareth and Alabastra appeared.

They issued no threat or warning. In fact, they started the violence with an explosive charge forward.

Gareth's raw combat power combined with Alabastra's ability to move unseen made them, as a pair, something close to unstoppable. A dozen red dragons lost their heads; ten thousand githarks fell. The scale of the casualties was enough to strip the arrogance from both the astral dragons and the githarks, and the parties agreed to negotiate instead.

[Dullahan's Crown: The talks should wrap up within a few days.]

[Megaman Tiga: Do you know how they're bypassing the covenant's restrictions?]

[Dullahan's Crown: Not exactly. I've heard it's classified. Are you asking because you want to stop the dragons from returning?]

[Megaman Tiga: Not necessarily. It depends on what would benefit me more. Either way, given our friendship, I'd want to consult you and Alabastra before I did anything. If I were to try to stop them, how would you feel about that?]

[Dullahan's Crown: Do whatever you want. It makes no difference to me. The dragons or the races on the mainland, they're all the same to me. I don't care who fights whom. As long as Alabastra is satisfied, that's the only thing that matters.]

That clarified things considerably. The key was Alabastra. As long as she was satisfied with how things went, Ambrose wouldn't have to worry about a schism within the Elegiac Society.

Still, he had the feeling that satisfying her would incur a substantial cost.