Lich for Hire

Allen wasn't sure what had come over him. Faced with critical intelligence, his first instinct had been to bring it to the lich.

It was somewhat absurd. He was a paladin, after all.

But Allen didn't dwell on the principle of it. He knew that Ambrose shared his goal, that they were both working to stop this unjust war.

It was better to get the intelligence to the lich.

But how was he to find him?

The lich hadn't given Allen a magic mirror. Allen didn't even know where he was at the moment.

After thinking it over, an ethically dubious idea surfaced. He muttered to himself, "That lich is a diviner. He can foresee the future. So if I curse him out loud now, won't he sense it?"

"Wow, Allen, you've picked up some bad habits. Are you even a paladin anymore?"

The voice at his ear startled Allen badly. Without looking, he triggered his legendary boon and flashed a hundred meters away. A sapling, which he took for an enemy on instinct, fell in two halves to his blade.

Only after putting some distance between them did Allen turn back. Standing there in human form was Ambrose, his face exactly as it had been the first time they met.

"You were eavesdropping?"

Ambrose chuckled. "I'm a lich. Eavesdropping is what evil creatures do. You, on the other hand, are a paladin talking behind someone's back. Aren't you ashamed of yourself?"

Allen had a sharp sense of déjà vu. He had fallen for this kind of moral leverage once before.

But the Allen of today wasn't the immature, unpolished youth he had been then.

"You're a lich, and I'm a paladin. Cursing you out is normal behavior, wouldn't you agree?"

"A few days apart and you've already gotten clever. The Lord of Dawn really did pick a prodigy. Even your wits are catching up."

That praise came with unmistakable mockery. The lich was insufferable.

"I take it I don't need to deliver the intelligence after all," Allen said. "How long have you been following me?"

"Not long. I got here just in time to hear you preparing to curse me out."

Ambrose was telling the truth. He had come specifically to find Allen.

Allen didn't bother trying to determine whether the lich was being honest. He laid out what he knew.

"Did you know tiflings have come to Lavarun? Someone in the Unholy Kingdom must be trying to negotiate with Lyon. I don't know whether they represent the kingdom as a whole, or only some particular faction."

Ambrose listened without surprise and offered his theory. "They're probably some of the Impure looking to defect. It doesn't matter much. Lyon won't accept the surrender. I expect the general agreed on the surface and is using the contact to set the tiflings against each other. That makes the kingdom easier to take."

"You... figured all that out just now?"

A strange feeling came over Allen. Ambrose had reached this conclusion within a second, knowing only that some tiflings had come to Lavarun.

The reasoning wasn't particularly difficult. Given time, Allen could have worked it out himself. But the lich's mind moved at terrifying speed. It hadn't even been a full second. Allen had been swindled out of five thousand gold the first time they met not because Ambrose had prepared the trap in advance, but because he had assembled the whole scheme the instant he saw Allen.

The lich was genuinely dangerous.

Allen looked at Ambrose with renewed wariness. They might share a goal now, but if the day came when they had to draw on each other, Allen worried he wouldn't get the chance for a fair duel before the lich outmaneuvered him to death.

Ambrose changed the subject. "By the way, Allen, you've found yourself a number of allies, haven't you?"

Allen nodded. "Thanks be to the Lord of Dawn. There really are people who can't accept Lyon as it is now. Not many, but they all want to change the empire as I do."

Ambrose answered calmly, "Then prepare yourself. Most of your allies will die today."

Allen's expression turned to shock. Forgetting his caution about the lich entirely, he flashed back to Ambrose's side. "What did you say? They'll die? What's happening?"

Ambrose patted Allen's shoulder. "Don't get worked up. What you're doing was always going to cost lives. People dying is normal. I saw a vision. The general is about to catch up with your allies. By my reckoning, it's happening right about now."

The words had barely left Ambrose's mouth when, in the distance, a thick column of holy light erupted into the sky.

"There it is. Your allies have been overtaken."

Allen had no time to interrogate Ambrose. He moved at full speed toward the column of light.

With flash after flash, he vanished from Ambrose's awareness almost immediately.

Ambrose followed at a leisurely pace. Allen's role had already been written in fate. No matter how fast he ran, the outcome would be the same. Of his allies, only one would survive.

"The Lord of Dawn's favor can't outweigh the Goddess of Fate's malice. Allen, this is your first trial. If you succumb to this, you will have no chance of overcoming Lyon."

Ambrose cast an illusion over his body again and followed behind Allen.

Most of Allen's allies had fallen where the holy light had landed. Only two still stood.

Roger Ángelo, with several hundred elite paladins at his back, had Lorencos and Alfredo surrounded.

Roger Ángelo's expression was darker than Lorencos had ever seen. Not even on the battlefield, facing the most monstrous opponents, had the general's face held that kind of fury.

Roger Ángelo walked toward Lorencos and ignored the drawn sword between them. He kept advancing, step by step.

The blade tip drew closer to Roger Ángelo's chest. The general didn't slow or sidestep. He let his chest meet the point of the sword, let Lorencos's blade tear through the cloth over his ribs and into his skin.

Blood ran down, darkening the front of Roger Ángelo's tunic.

He didn't seem to notice. His eyes stayed on Lorencos. "You drew your sword on me. Lorencos, I never imagined the day would come when you would betray me. Why? I want an explanation."

A bitter smile crossed Lorencos's aged face. "Roger, the empire is walking into the abyss. Don't you see that?"

"Don't give me that nonsense. I'm asking why you betrayed me."

Roger Ángelo tore open the front of his tunic in fury. Beneath the fresh sword cut were old scars crisscrossing his chest. He pointed at one on his shoulder. "This one. I took this for you. That bear-goblin could cut a man in half along with his armor. He'd already killed several of our brothers before me. I blocked the killing blow that was meant for you.

"And this one. The year we ran into the orc slaver patrol. Two of us against thirty orcs. This wound on my neck, I took saving you. You'd be dead twice over otherwise.

"And this one, and this one. Every one of these scars came from a battle we fought side by side. Lorencos, you have your own scars. You've saved me as many times as I've saved you. We stopped counting whose mortal wounds we'd taken for whom long ago. Whatever the matter was, why couldn't you have come to me? How could you betray me? How could you?"

Roger Ángelo's eyes were red. His roar rang with something close to madness.

A look of remembrance crossed Lorencos's face, but he quickly calmed down.

"Why, Roger? Do you remember the first time we went after a cult? You killed a child to keep our presence quiet. A child with his finger in his mouth, whose head didn't even reach my knee."

"They were cultists!" Roger Ángelo answered furiously. "His parents were cultists. He'd been raised speaking the infernal tongue from the cradle."

Lorencos answered evenly. "No. That wasn't the reason. We were inexperienced. We were supposed to slip into the cult's temple and kill the demon directly. The villagers might have been saved, then. We failed. We were spotted. You were afraid the child would scream and give us away, so you cut his head off before he could open his mouth.

"Then his parents. Then his older sister. We were executioners. The oath of vengeance, the oath of conquest—we used our oaths to cover it all and lie to our own consciences."

"But we saved the rest of the villagers." Roger Ángelo brushed it off. "More than we killed, far more."

Lorencos sighed. "Roger, you always do this. You hide behind grand justifications for what you've done. You ask why I betrayed you. I didn't betray you. We both betrayed the Lord of Dawn. I'm going to fall to Hell, Roger. And so are you."

Roger Ángelo's teeth ground together. He reached out and seized the edge of Lorencos's sword.

The blade didn't cut into his palm. Holy light wrapped his hand in dense radiance. He crushed the sword in his grip, deforming the steel, and demanded, "Lorencos, you think you've seen the truth, but my holy light is stronger than yours. Stand down. Come back with me. I'll act as though none of this happened. No one will know about your betrayal. You and your son can both live."

Off to one side, Alfredo trembled and looked at his father. He hadn't expected the notoriously merciless general to spare them. He looked at Lorencos with hope, willing him to stand down.

Living was the priority. Whether they fell to Hell later was a question for later. If they lived, there was a chance to change things. Dying now meant Hell for certain.

But Lorencos shook his head. "Roger, my friend, grant me one last fair duel."

"You fool! Lorencos, you've never been my equal. This is suicide!"

Despite cursing, Roger Ángelo drew his sword anyway.

Brilliant holy light wrapped his body and resolved into a suit of dazzling silver-white armor.

Six wings of light unfurled at his back as Roger Ángelo rose into the air.

The general called to his old friend in fury, "Lorencos, come and meet your death."