Chapter 448: Less and Less Human

Milena watched her mother close the Necromantic Codex. She didn't know what her elders had been discussing, but something in her mother's bearing was off.

Black Rose's expression hadn't visibly changed—it never did—but Milena had spent long enough at her side to read her subtle tells.

She crossed the room quickly. "Did something happen?"

"Your father is coming," Black Rose said. "The Ragetide business has reached its final stage. After that, I'll be returning to the Umbral Depths. Stay with your father. If you go back now, those slaves will just talk you into digging mines again."

Milena winced. "That was a misunderstanding! They said their pickaxes couldn't break through, so I showed them it was possible. Then they said a pickaxe would shatter after ten hits, so I proved it wouldn't. Then they said maybe not ten hits, but somewhere around there, so I had to prove that wrong too—"

"And then you dug through an entire mine shaft with one pickaxe."

"But I proved it was fine!"

Black Rose regarded her daughter with exasperation. "At this rate, you'll only ever be a burden to your father. When will you actually be useful?

"Wait, is Father in trouble again? Did he upset another goddess?"

Milena had more or less come to terms with this as a recurring feature of her life. Other people's fathers had ordinary failings: gambling, drinking, domestic violence, or even selling off their families when money ran dry.

Her father was successful, attentive to his family, and extraordinary to his friends. Everyone who had ever helped him had seen the favor returned tenfold or more.

His one failing was that, whenever trouble found him, it invariably involved a deity.

For a mortal, that was quite a failing indeed.

History had no shortage of mortals who had offended the gods, but none who had managed to offend as many, across as wide a spectrum, as Ambrose.

Black Rose gave a brief account of Thanos. Milena stared. "The Lord of Storms this time? Father's talent for finding trouble is getting out of hand."

Even Milena understood what Thanos represented. And unlike most of the goddesses her father had provoked, Thanos was not someone who could be outmaneuvered through charm and cleverness alone. Could he actually solve this?

"Mother, what's the plan? Does Father have an idea?"

"Thanos isn't easily satisfied," the Black Rose said. "Your father disrupted a wedding he had arranged. I suggested he marry the Ragetide princess himself, but he refused."

Milena blinked. "Wait, you suggested that? Last time I said something like that, you were so mad at me!" 𝘧𝓇ℯℴ𝓂

Milena had once casually mentioned that it might be convenient if Ambrose kept up the Monge Greywater persona and married Ariel to stabilize the Ragetide Kingdom. Black Rose had reacted in a way that strongly discouraged her from ever raising that topic again.

But now Black Rose had made the same suggestion herself.

"That was a smaller problem that didn't require a marriage to resolve." Black Rose shook her head. "This time, the trouble your father is in is beyond what I can help with."

In the past, she had been able to spend money, call in favors, and mobilize people to handle most crises. But Ambrose's problems now were uniformly divine in nature. She had no tools for that. Increasingly, she was the one who had to ask Ambrose for help resolving her issues, not the other way around.

What troubled her more was the question she couldn't answer: when had she started caring about him so much?

What did it have to do with destroying Lyon?

She found herself wondering, with a discomfort she couldn't quite name, how Ambrose would feel when she eventually ceased to exist.

It was a strange feeling, and one she didn't know how to process.

So when the subject of the wedding came up, she had tried, carefully, to sound out whether Ambrose had any interest in the Ragetide princess.

In her mind, that princess was no different from the drow. If Ambrose wanted her, and it solved the problem, then it was a good outcome.

But the answer had been no. And Black Rose had found, somewhat to her own surprise, that she was rather... pleased.

If Ambrose wasn't going to marry Ariel, though, he needed another solution, because she couldn't stand by and watch Thanos punish him.

The last lich Thanos had fixated on had been converted into a subordinate deity and tormented for years without mercy. Valarun had only escaped through a combination of extraordinary luck and cunning.

Not every deity was as fortunate. Those who couldn't escape were simply destroyed under Thanos's displeasure.

Black Rose felt more and more unsettled. Just what was going on with her?

She had never felt emotionally destabilized by anything that wasn't directly connected to Lyon. This was different.

Before she could decide on what to do, the door opened and Princess Ariel appeared.

Ariel greeted Black Rose, then turned to Milena. "Those whale-hunting ships I mentioned, the ones that go after narwhals, are heading out today. Want to come?"

Milena's eyes lit up immediately.

After spending so much time together, Ariel and Black Rose had arrived at a cordial business relationship, but nothing more than that. Ariel had actually grown closer to Milena, a girl who so obviously lacked any capacity for scheming that spending time with her was genuinely restful.

In a life spent navigating heavy official duties and court intrigue, having someone like Milena around let Ariel's mind relax.

They had been finding excuses to go off on excursions together with increasing frequency.

Milena glanced at her mother, received a nod of permission, and went off happily arm-in-arm with Ariel.

Black Rose watched them go.

An odd thought surfaced: when Lyon finally fell and her own existence ended, if that Princess Ariel were to take over her role, she would probably treat Milena well.

Black Rose shook her head. That was not a concern for her.

Ambrose had survived countless offended deities before. Thanos would likely be no different. She trusted him to find a way.

Ambrose, meanwhile, remained unaware of just how complicated his "romantic situation" had apparently become. He was currently escorting another woman with whom his life had become thoroughly entangled toward the depths of the sea.

The former elven queen Catherine sat with him aboard the Blacktide. Two months ago, she would still have been curious about the airship.

By now, however, two drow trade routes were already operational: one from the Court of the Silver Moon to the dwarven capital, and another from the dwarven capital to the orcish empire.

Six transport airships worked those lines, ranging from ten to fifty tons of cargo capacity, all operated by drow. Catherine had trained every one of them personally, sending each up into the air only when she was satisfied.

Out of the thousand-plus drow under her care, she had been able to select only thirty capable of operating an airship, and even that had required her charm at full blast. Getting thirty drow to change their ways for good was an achievement.

It said something about how deeply ingrained those ways were. Reforming them was not a quick project.

Each transport ship ran with five drow handling navigation, piloting, and cargo coordination, though Ambrose's airships were fitted with enough "intelligent undead" systems that the operation wasn't overly demanding.

The job was to deliver cargo to the designated destination, verify the load, and collect payment. As for unloading, others would handle that.

The first shipments had been priced to break even to establish their reputation. Now that the drow trade routes were a known entity, as shipping volume increased, the unit economics would begin to work in their favor.

Catherine had also spent considerable time warning the drow that the airship cabins were not to be used for prostitution. She had caught that development early enough to stop it, but not without some effort. These drow would have happily converted the vessels into flying brothels if given the chance.

Ambrose had fully supported the policy, not out of any moral objection—business was business—but because mixing those activities into a freight operation created management headaches and the potential for catastrophic accidents.

An incident on the flight deck could send a hundred-million-gold ship straight down. Flight safety was non-negotiable.

On top of all of this, the underwater campaign was still ongoing. The Lyon commanders had been pulled back to fight the orcs, but the tifling and elven contingents were still pushing the Sea of Volcanoes front forward. Those two factions had never been warm toward each other, and neither had produced anything close to Angus Watson's level of military talent, so they argued constantly.

Catherine was both managing the drow routes and arbitrating between the tiflings and elves to keep the campaign moving. Despite her mounting workload, this was precisely the moment Ambrose had chosen to take her away.

"You'd better have a good explanation." Catherine sat aboard the Blacktide, making no effort to hide her irritation. "I'm genuinely overwhelmed right now. What do you need that specifically requires me?"

"It really does have to be you," Ambrose said. "I need to have a conversation with the kouto goddess."

Catherine frowned. "You're planning to commit another act of divine profanity? As a friend, I have to say something: greed is a poison. It corrodes the will. You already have more wealth than most kingdoms can imagine. Even if you stopped everything you were doing, you'd keep amassing more gold. Why keep going after the gods?"

"You've got it backwards," Ambrose said, with exasperation. "When have I ever started something with a deity? It's always the other way around. Every time, they come after me. I'm always acting in self-defense."

Catherine laughed dryly. "If there were a few more people in the world defending themselves the way you do, the divine chronicles would be half as thick."

"You've learned to be passive-aggressive, Catherine. You've been spending too much time with the drow. I fear your once-pure soul has been thoroughly corrupted."

Catherine rolled her eyes. She was done with this line of conversation.

"Give me the real explanation, and quickly! I wasn't blessed by the Prince of Lies and I can't help you deceive a deity, so if that's what this is, I'm going back right now."

Ambrose walked her through the situation with Thanos, then explained: "I need the kouto goddess's cooperation. Aiolos failed to satisfy Thanos, but if Ariel can live through Aiolos's story herself, endure the same trials, and come out the other side, I believe Thanos will be satisfied.

"He wants a hero. Male or female shouldn't matter much to him. What I need from the kouto goddess is for her to run the same scheme again, just with Ariel as the target instead of Aiolos."

Catherine stared at him. "You have some nerve. You deceived that Ragetide princess once already. Now you want to send her into deliberate suffering? What happened to you?"

"I'm a lich. We famously lack humanity. Are you going to help or not? This is directly relevant to your drow trade route's safety. If Thanos is unhappy, one sneeze from him would bring our ships down."

That wasn't an exaggeration. Thanos's mood had a direct effect on the world's weather. He didn't even need to act deliberately. Enough displeasure, and permanent thunderstorms would become the new normal, with devastating consequences for any aerial route.

"I am not going to stand by while you push an innocent young woman into harm's way," Catherine said. "Even if the Lord of Storms were to take his anger out on us over it, that wouldn't justify endangering someone who has done nothing wrong. I'd sooner pray to the elven gods for help than see you do this. You weren't like this before. Even when you were manipulating people, you held to basic morality. You kidnapped an entire Lyon city and didn't kill a single person. That's why I've kept helping you. What's happened to you?"

Upon seeing Catherine's disappointment, Ambrose hesitated.

Catherine wasn't wrong. His moral threshold was fading away. Worse, he hadn't even noticed it happening.

That was what the loss of humanity looked like. He was becoming colder, less able to account for the cost to others in his thinking.

"Maybe this is simply fate," he said, after a moment. "From the moment I became a lich, whatever I try, I drift toward evil. There's a reason undead are classified as inherently evil."

"I don't believe that," Catherine said. "The others, maybe. Not you. You don't even take the gods seriously! Surely you can solve this too."

"You're overestimating me." He shook his head. "Fine, no more arguments. Since you're against using Ariel as the bait, tell me what you think I should do instead."