Lich for Hire

The black fog swallowed everyone's vision. For just a moment, the holy light binding the Lyon forces together flickered and destabilized.

That moment was all Ambrose needed.

He locked onto Roger Ángelo's position and guided the meteors down.

The dice of fate resolved the notoriously chaotic trajectories of Meteor Shower into a single inevitable arc. All four meteors struck Roger Ángelo squarely.

Meteor Shower, often termed the disgrace of ninth-tier spells, lacked for accuracy, not power. With that blinding flaw resolved, the onlookers were instantly reminded why it was a ninth-tier spell.

The first drove Roger Ángelo from the sky into a crater more than ten meters deep. The second finished off what remained of the celestial warform, already battered from the duel with Lorencos.

When the third descended, Roger Ángelo managed to meet it with a Sacred Slash and cut it apart—but the fourth struck him anyway. The last vestige of the transformation shattered completely. He didn't know how many bones had broken. His body had very nearly been flattened.

Unfortunately, he was still breathing.

The shattered transformation dissolved back into holy light and poured into him, knitting his wounds shut.

Ambrose watched from above, unsurprised.

Roger Ángelo's standing in Lyon was second only to the Silvermoon Knight. He was not someone to be taken lightly, and his magical equipment reflected that.

The celestial warform's resurrection effect had already been stripped away—not by Ambrose killing Roger Ángelo, but by Lorencos. His legendary boon allowed his Sacred Slash to dispel one active magical enhancement on whatever it struck.

As it happened, the effect he had stripped was resurrection.

And now its powerful healing effect had been exhausted as well.

Even so, Ambrose didn't press the attack. The black fog blanketing the field was already thinning. Suppressing a host of priests wasn't easy—they had no shortage of methods with which to purge magical effects.

What they hadn't anticipated was that Ambrose was targeting the gap between their emergence from the darkness and the re-establishment of their magical defenses. Hundreds of pulses of dark magic erupted from his hand.

Power Word: Kill was a ninth-tier spell that struck its target with an instant-death effect. Any creature without sufficient vitality to resist it simply died.

A single-target spell, it was widely regarded as one of the most useless ninth-tier spells in existence.

The opponent of any mage capable of casting ninth-tier spells was surely strong enough to shrug off an instant-death effect.

Against grunts, on the other hand, a Fireball would clear a crowd far more efficiently than any single-target spell.

But a Power Word: Kill turned into an area spell was the finest crowd-clearer in Ambrose's arsenal, more effective than Meteor Shower, with no possibility for a saving throw and no defense beyond raw vitality.

More than half the paladins and priests fell where they stood.

Guardian auras, magical shields—none of it mattered. This was the power of a ninth-tier spell could do.

Still, converting a single-target spell into an area effect was not cheap. Ambrose had just spent over a million gold to achieve such an effect, and the Golden Throne behind him had visibly diminished.

The effect was worth it. A chain of Fireballs would have done far less, perhaps a dozen casualties against the same host, instead of an order of magnitude more.

When Roger Ángelo hauled himself out of the crater and saw the bodies scattered across the ground, he directed his rage skyward.

"Damn you, lich! I'll kill you for this!"

Then he turned to his remaining troops. "Retreat!"

What was left of his paladins and clerics immediately linked their holy light back together, forming a massive sphere of radiance that they launched toward Ambrose as they fell back.

Roger Ángelo was nothing like the Silvermoon Knight, who only knew how to charge forward. He was the finest commanding officer in the empire.

The only reason Ambrose had gotten the upper hand was because he had been shaken by his old friend's betrayal, and Ambrose had struck while the wound was fresh.

Though he was furious, Roger Ángelo did not let anger dictate his decisions.

The current situation called for a retreat. No matter how severe the losses he had to incur, there was no helping it. He had already sent a call for aid to Lavarun, signaled through bursts of holy light fired skyward.

Long-range communication was a challenge for every civilization, and Lyon had solved it in its own way.

Distinct patterns of holy light transmitted distinct messages, the same system had been used during the battle for Alkhemia to coordinate forces inside and outside the walls.

The technique demanded considerable skill, and most soldiers couldn't produce a pillar of light visible at that distance, but as far as military signaling went, it was remarkably effective.

Ambrose himself didn't know what the patterns meant, but the fact that there were columns of light shooting skyward in seemingly random bursts told him enough.

"Full of tricks, aren't they."

He dodged the barrage of holy light while following the Lyon forces at a leisurely pace, as though he intended to chase them all the way home.

Roger Ángelo allowed himself a cold smile. Let the lich follow. Lavarun was close. The garrison would arrive in minutes, and when it did, this lich would be purified where he stood.

But just as he began to think that things were going well, he stepped on something underfoot.

It was simultaneously soft and hard, as if he had stepped on a water bladder filled with small chunks of metal.

Whatever it was, the sensation was strange enough that he immediately pulled his foot back and threw himself backward.

That reflex saved him.

A silver blade erupted from the earth precisely where he had been standing, thrusting upward from below. An instant slower, and it would have gone straight through him.

That wasn't the only trap, either. There were dozens. Silver blades burst from the ground across a wide area, angled to find the gaps between legs and in armor. Cries broke out as several soldiers were struck.

Priests rushed in to heal them, but their formation had already broken.

Then Roger Ángelo saw what the traps actually were. Dozens of silver-white slimes had surfaced from underground and were throwing themselves at the nearest Lyon soldiers.

Some were cleaved apart by Sacred Slashes on the spot.

Others landed on their targets. Paladins and priests wore heavy armor that laughed off ordinary attacks, but these silver slimes could corrode metal at extraordinary speed, then condense the dissolved material into fine blades that they drove into their victims' bodies.

It was unlike anything any of the paladins and priests had ever encountered.

Another dozen Lyon soldiers went down. The rest scrambled to deal with the slimes, swords swinging and divine magic flying.

Ambrose gave them no chance to focus.

He shot out a chain of Fireballs, aiming to turn every last one of them to ash.

Roger Ángelo forced himself into motion despite everything.

The full impact of a Meteor Shower had devastated his body, damaging his bones and organs alike, but he had no choice but to make a move now.

The Leonine General charged straight into the Fireballs, his Sacred Slash cutting each one apart as it came, the blasts staggering him back with each detonation. He weathered all of it, breaking the thrust of Ambrose's assault.

Meanwhile, his remaining soldiers pulled free of the slimes and reformed their ranks.

No army in the world could absorb this many consecutive ambushes and still hold. Any other force would have routed long ago.

Unfortunately for them, Ambrose wasn't done.

In the distance, a massive black whirlwind tore skyward, an enormous concentration of dark magic bearing down on their position.

A force composed entirely of death knights came charging in. At their head, in full heavy armor, was Milena.

When Gareth charged on his eight-legged steed, the effect was that of a battering ram. He obliterated whatever stood before him.

Milena's charge was something different: a spear thrust that punched through any resistance in a single line.

The gap between the forces was too short for the death knights to reach full speed, but the Lyon soldiers had only just finished reforming their ranks, with no time to brace for impact. The death knights hit them before they were ready.

There were only about a dozen death knights, but they drove straight through the formation and left a corridor of devastation behind them. Then they turned and charged back again.

Roger Ángelo spat out a mouthful of blood.

How had these death knights managed to lay an ambush? How had Lavarun's sentries failed to detect undead in the vicinity?

"Lorencos, you truly did betray Lyon. You colluded with the undead!"

This had to be a premeditated ambush. His old friend had used himself as bait and delivered Roger Ángelo into a trap.

But there was still a way out.

Roger Ángelo raised his sword and fired a blazing signal of holy light into the sky.

Seconds later, an answering light rose from Lavarun.

Then, a vast column of radiance descended from above, enveloping Roger Ángelo's entire force.

Every death knight it touched dissolved instantly into ash, their magical armor providing no protection whatsoever.

Only Milena managed to raise her whisperwood barrier in time to deflect the column. She immediately sprinted to Ambrose's side.

Within the column's radius, all living beings except the Lyon soldiers were destroyed.

The death knights crumbled. The silver slimes writhed, their bodies losing cohesion as they steamed. Even the grass and flowers on the ground were annihilated.

This was Lyon's true strength: the ability to transform the faith of an entire population into tangible, destructive power. Lavarun was a military installation, but it housed a substantial civilian population, and those people had been praying for years. The accumulated faith that column represented was worth more than any number of Meteor Showers.

Roger Ángelo stood bathed in the holy light. His outline flickered, but his voice carried clearly.

"Wretched undead, I will have my revenge for this. Lyon will not suffer your kind to exist in this world. Just you wait. I'll smash your phylactery to pieces and dump it in a cesspit!"

Ambrose laughed quietly. "Undead are filthy, and holy light ought to cleanse them—you're quite right. But tell me, General Ángelo, have you ever considered that you yourself might one day turn into an undead?"

The space beside Ambrose distorted. Black Rose stepped out of his extradimensional space. The noble undead queen eyed Roger Ángelo, death in her gaze.