Chapter 3: A Tax Crisis

All magicians rigged their grounds with traps, lethal or otherwise, to deter thieves.

After all, magicians' towers were littered with small objects of enormous value: rare reagents, priceless notes, arcane tomes, and so on. They were the first things that thieves would go after.

This scenario, in which one side set traps and the other disarmed them, had been ongoing for millennia. No magician nor thief could escape this fate. Yet the group of intruders didn't look like thieves at all. None of them had even managed to get past the most basic outer warning wards of the castle.

Ambrose emerged from the doorway in a full-body robe and found a young couple huddled on the lawn. Their clothes were little more than rags. The young man lay in a pool of blood, with several barbed spikes driven through his thigh. His leg was all but ruined. The girl strained to drag him away but couldn't move him an inch.

At the sight of Ambrose, she screamed in pure panic.

Ambrose flicked his finger. A sleep spell shot from his hand. The girl's shout trailed off as she instantly slumped into a deep sleep.

𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

Ambrose walked slowly to the injured man and asked, "Why did you barge into my manor? Didn't you see the sign warning you of magical traps?"

The man trembled. Few mortals could see a lich without being unnerved. Legendary liches naturally had an aura of dread about them. It wasn't quite at the level of a knightmare, but was still much more than ordinary humans could bear.

He gritted his teeth through the pain. "I... can't read," he managed.

Ambrose: "..."

"Even if you can't read," Ambrose pressed, "didn't your lord tell you this is lich territory?"

The man was weak from loss of blood, but he forced out a plea with what little strength remained. "Great Lich, take my life and soul if you must, but please spare my sister. We're fleeing for our lives. We had no choice but to break into your manor. We meant no offense."

"You're runaway slaves?"

Only fugitives with nothing left to lose would barge into a lich's domain, likely assuming that the horror stories they'd heard were just tall tales meant to frighten and dissuade them from escaping.

"No, we're just ordinary folk," the man protested desperately. "Our lord suddenly raised the taxes. Our family had already paid, but he demanded double. We couldn't pay. He threatened to sell my sister to the brothel!"

"Demanded double? Did you offend your lord somehow?"

The man shook his head. "It's not just us. They're coming down hard on our whole county, even the neighboring ones nearby. Everyone's being forced to pay more taxes. Those who can't are being enslaved!"

Ambrose frowned inwardly. The Alchemists' Council would never permit such abuse. Could it be on the brink of ruin itself?

It made sense. The failed new-species projects had likely bled Alkhemia dry. The elves of the Court of the Silver Moon were gouging the market for potion ingredients, hiking prices and worsening the city's shortfall. With daily orders unfilled and reparations piling up, the council had probably resorted to desperate measures.

The alchemists, in a fit of panic, must have announced sweeping tax hikes to try to cover their losses. And local lords, eager to mimic the council, had naturally pushed the burden onto the commoners.

"Are there many of you fleeing?" Ambrose asked.

"Lots! I know of dozens..." the man began, then went limp. The blood loss had finally caught up to him.

Left unattended, he would die, providing Ambrose with a convenient source of fresh materials for his experiments. But as Ambrose thought of the mass exodus, a new plan flickered through his mind.

Magic flared from his fingertips. A healing spell washed over the man.

The barbs were expelled from his thigh and new flesh closed over the wound. With his lost blood replenished, the man slowly regained his strength.

Moments later, he came to once more.

Seeing the wound sealed, he fell to his knees before Ambrose. "Thank you, Master Lich!"

Ambrose's laugh was a dry rattle. "If you're saying ‘thank you' to a lich, that must mean your head hasn't quite cleared yet. Do you think I'll just let you go? You trespassed on lich territory. Be prepared to leave your souls and corpses behind."

"No, my lord, please—!" the man cried out, kneeling and pleading for his life.

Ambrose sighed, clearly losing patience, and flicked his fingers. A Silence spell cut the man's words off mid-sob.

"Don't panic," Ambrose said evenly. "I'll give you a chance to live. You'll just have to help me with a little task."

He snapped his fingers. Two strange skeletal creatures emerged from the shadows. They were made of bones, but definitely not human ones. They looked vaguely like skeletal hounds, except that they had three-fingered arms jutting out from where their skulls should be.

What sort of creature left that skeleton behind was anyone's guess.

The two bone-hounds gently lifted the sleeping girl onto their backs and followed behind Ambrose.

The man stared at the lich's retreating figure—and that of his own sister—before forcing himself to follow. He didn't dare resist. One wrong move and he'd be another corpse on the slab. Still, the lich had healed him. Perhaps he wasn't entirely unreasonable. Maybe, just maybe, there was a chance to survive this.

Clinging to that fragile hope, the man followed Ambrose into his castle.

The lich led them straight into his laboratory and gestured curtly. "Stand over there. Don't speak unless I ask you a question."

With that, he turned away and resumed his work.

Ambrose took out a crystal sphere and suspended it high above the worktable. It was a memory crystal, a common magical device that could record both sight and sound. When he activated it, the sphere began to glow softly.

"Skeletal Reconstruction Experiment #176," Ambrose announced. "For centuries, necromancers have defaulted to humanoid skeletons: two hundred and six bones forming a bipedal frame. But without muscles or tendons, every bone must be held together purely by soul energy.

"Even a single toe has two joints. For a skeleton to walk upright, its soul must constantly perform real-time calculations to maintain biaxial balance. Frankly, I consider that an unnecessary waste of computing power..."

The memory crystal shimmered brighter, recording every movement as Ambrose began assembling bones piece by piece.