Lich for Hire

Sariel had never imagined she would be threatened by a mortal, much less be unable to dismiss the threat.

A lich who could manufacture souls of high enough quality to function as Hell's hard currency... If word of this reached the other Lords of Hell, every one of them would lose their minds for a chance at this lich.

Given her nature, Sariel should have cursed Ambrose viciously and dispatched her infernal knights to hunt him to the ends of the earth.

But not this time. Sariel glared at him in fury and left him with a parting line. "Sooner or later, you will pay for your provocations. But this time, you've won, lich."

Ambrose let out a small breath.

He had been bluffing through gritted teeth.

Given the choice, Ambrose would never have threatened an Archduchess of Hell so brazenly. Sariel might not have been the most powerful figure in the divine pantheon, but she was still a god.

Cutting off a portion of the supply of damned souls would enrage all of Hell. Across the nine layers of Hell, there were plenty of lords more terrifying than Sariel, never mind the dreaded lord of the ninth layer, Asmodeus.

Ambrose had read about Asmodeus in historical tomes. All sentient beings hostile to him would be subject to overwhelming mental compulsion the moment they came into his presence. Fail to resist, and they would become Asmodeus's servant. The compulsion was never-ending. People might withstand it for a minute or two, but could they do so for an hour or two? A day or two?

Fleeing was an option, but rumor held that Asmodeus's body was so vast that he could pinch two fingers together to form a canyon. How wide, then, was the radius of his compulsion? Even with supersonic flight, Ambrose might not escape before being seized.

Rumor also held that Sariel herself had been compelled by Asmodeus into her current form, that this was how a sacred angel had become a devil of hell.

Given the choice, Ambrose would never attempt to provoke Hell Lord Asmodeus.

If he prevented souls from falling to Hell, who knew if the others would come to him to negotiate or simply dispatch their cultists and monsters to hunt him down?

If Sariel hadn't been so thoroughly impervious to reason, Ambrose would never be so reckless.

But now that she had relented, Ambrose hurried to soften his tone.

"Now, now. I never said I wouldn't pay. I'm still willing to deliver the soul-coins I promised earlier. This was always meant to be a win-win situation. There's no need for either of us to hold a grudge. Wouldn't you agree?"

Sariel felt tempted to slap him. As long as she didn't leave any obvious mark, Aion's prohibition might not be triggered.

But she had just shown weakness to him. Lashing out now in wounded pride would be more humiliating still.

She answered coldly, "You want to know my plan with Tiamat? Fine. You were right. We need a diviner to help us complete a ritual."

"What kind of ritual?"

"Tiamat is constructing an astral passage. We need a diviner to calibrate the spatial interface."

"An astral passage?"

It took Ambrose a moment to place the term and for the relevant knowledge to surface in his mind.

The astral plane was akin to a parallel world.

The existence of parallel planes was no secret. Each divine realm was an independent world. In principle, even Ambrose's own extradimensional space could be counted as a different plane, albeit a small one entirely furnished with whatever Ambrose had stuffed into it.

The nine layers of Hell were each independent worlds, tightly connected to one another.

These different planes had any number of names: inner planes, outer planes, elemental planes, the material plane, and so on.

There were also the Outer Realms, the Sea of Chaos, and countless other terms. Across history, countless mages had researched the planes, generation after generation laying down their lives in pursuit of cosmic truth. But their findings had never coalesced into a unified system. The works Ambrose had read described the planar structure from many different perspectives, and there were even outright contradictions among them.

Some held the universe as a tree, with each branch a different world. Others described it as a pyramid: gods at the top, Hell at the bottom, Aion at the apex. Beyond these were the Cosmic Wheel theory and the Cosmic Scroll theory. Even legendary mages could only glimpse a corner of cosmology; no one could see the whole.

But one thing was certain: the world Ambrose lived on was part of the material plane, not the whole of it.

The astral plane could be understood as a special space surrounding the material plane. To leave the material plane and travel to the outer worlds, one had to pass through the astral plane.

Building a stable passage required finding a weakness in the fabric of space. Identifying the location of that weakness was difficult, and a superficial analysis might produce any number of plausible-but-ultimately-wrong results. A single miscalculation could waste enormous amounts of effort.

Ambrose realized that the two Lords of Hell had originally intended to use the souls of those millions of tiflings as fuel for the construction, generously enough that they had budgeted for several failed attempts.

But as far as the astral plane was concerned... A strange name surfaced suddenly in Ambrose's mind.

He turned to Sariel in surprise. "Are you planning to bring the githark army into this world?"

Sariel raised an eyebrow. "There are countless races in the astral plane. How did you guess that we were interested in the githark?"

"It's obvious. The githark have a contract with Tiamat, and their elite warriors are red dragon riders. If Tiamat is opening an astral passage, of course she must be planning to bring them across."

"Your erudition is genuinely impressive, lich."

Sariel was truly surprised. The contract between the githark and Tiamat was highly obscure information, perhaps documented only in records dating back several thousand years to a former mage civilization. By now, those records should have been lost to time.

But Ambrose took no pleasure in the praise. He asked her, with sudden gravity, "Are you trying to destroy this world?"

Even the Lord of Dawn's descent hadn't shaken Ambrose to this extent.

In every tome in which they were mentioned, the githark were consistently described as ugly, brutal, militaristic, and fanatically racist, with no capacity for kindness or mercy.

From what Ambrose understood, the githark had once been an enslaved race. After winning their freedom, the entire species had radicalized. Githark were notorious raiders, fond of invading other worlds to enslave and pillage their native inhabitants.

There were no civilian githark. Every member of the race was a soldier, raised from childhood to be part of the military. You could be a blacksmith, an archer, a frontline warrior—but not a civilian.

The race didn't farm. Everything they consumed came from enslaving other races, much like the Spartans Ambrose remembered from his past life.

Sariel gave him a cold smile. "Why would a lich say something like that? An empire shining with the Lord of Dawn's light, ruling the entire continent—that should be your version of destruction. Under the brutal and crude rule of githark, you undead would thrive."

Ambrose answered coldly, "If human lives stop having value, who's going to buy my artificial souls? A human slave already costs less than one of my artificial souls. Under githark rule, human lives won't be worth anything. There'd be no business left for me!"

And githark didn't trade—they only plundered. They were exactly the kind of people Ambrose despised most.

Sariel hadn't expected that response.

"You really are... I don't have the vocabulary to describe what you are. In any case, you know the truth now. Lich, what kind of deal are you proposing?"

"I want my senior's soul back. As for the astral passage... I suppose that's your business. I'm not the one who should be most concerned. Name your price in soul-coins."

A githark invasion would be Lyon's problem, more than anyone else's.

Ten or even twenty thousand githark would be a severe blow against Lyon. A hundred thousand could tip the war against them.

A million would force Lyon to commit everything they had.

Ten million, and every kingdom on the continent would be forced to mount a desperate stand against the githark. Even then, victory would be far from assured.

No matter what, Lyon would be most impacted by the invaders.

"I won't take a single soul-coin from you. I'll remember this humiliation, and I'll find an opportunity to repay it a hundredfold. As for the deal you're proposing, let Tiamat handle that herself. Lich, I advise you not to ascend to godhood too quickly. Otherwise, I'll come for you with the flames of vengeance."

"You'd... turn down several million soul-coins for the sake of a grudge?"

Ambrose was getting a headache. He genuinely hadn't wanted to make an enemy of Sariel.

Sariel gave him one last derisive look and dissolved into flame.

Ambrose could only sigh. "Oh well. Once your debts pile up high enough, you stop worrying about them."

He had offended enough gods already. One more wouldn't break the bank. If the worst came to it, he could have another conversation with the elven pantheon and see if they would shoulder some of the additional grudge.

He expected Tiamat would come knocking soon enough. With the matter clarified, he was eager to share the good news with Mr. Misfortune.

Played well, this could both save Mr. Misfortune and also resolve the Lyon invasion.

The magic mirror connected him to Mr. Misfortune, who seemed to have aged further in the short time since Ambrose had last seen him. His burdens were clearly considerable.

What every diviner feared most was foretelling their own death. Mr. Misfortune was in much the same position. He was walking, step by step, into Hell.

Ambrose cut to the chase. "Good news. I've gotten you out from Sariel. Not only that, I think I've also found a way to handle the Lyon invasion."

He laid out the details of the deal. Mr. Misfortune frowned. "The githark? What kind of race is that?"

"They're brutal, savage, ugly creatures who think only of plunder. Their skin looks like a toad's, and every one of them has an upturned nose. They look at people through their nostrils..."

Ambrose passed along everything he knew, but Mr. Misfortune's frown didn't ease.

"What's wrong? You're safe. The Unholy Kingdom is safe. Why aren't you happy?"

Mr. Misfortune shook his head. "It's nothing. I've probably just been worrying too much. Thank you, Arthas. I owe you my life."

"I spent serious gold on this, and I expect the Unholy Kingdom is going to reimburse me. A million soul-coins requires materials in bulk. I'll send you a list. Have it ready for me."

Ambrose decided to inflate the material cost by a factor of five and turn a tidy profit on the side.

Mr. Misfortune smiled and nodded. "Of course. I'll have everything prepared."

Ambrose sent the list and broke the connection.

Though he should now be able to relax, Ambrose couldn't shake a feeling of unease. The unease wasn't coming from Sariel or Tiamat, either. Mr. Misfortune was the culprit.

Ambrose tossed out a few dice of fate to try to pin down what was wrong.

The dice were sliced apart by countless threads of fate in midair. Mr. Misfortune had walked further along the path of fate than Ambrose; divinations targeting him almost always failed.

Ambrose wasn't ready to give up. He shifted to his Loom of Fate.

"Senior. You wouldn't mind going bald, would you?"

He attempted to weave a distant future for Mr. Misfortune in which the man simply lost his hair.

The spell failed. He couldn't weave such a fate. It was as though another fate had already been set, one so weighty that it left no room for an alternative.

Fate could not be altered. Even the Loom of Fate couldn't reshape what had already been determined.

Ambrose was silent for a long moment, then murmured, "Senior, you really aren't favored by the Goddess of Fate, are you?"