Chapter 416: A Second Ariel

Nephrys was genuinely frightened.

The title of Mistress of the Silent Sea already carried enormous weight among the peoples of the ocean. Everyone who lived beneath the waves knew that Captain Aige was not to be provoked. Short of divine intervention, no one could stand against that crew.

The saving grace was that they generally kept to their own waters. Open piracy was relatively rare; there had been stretches of over a decade where they lay completely dormant and the seas were calm.

Aige was fearsome, but she had no particular reputation for cruelty. No one had ever heard of the Silent Sea Pirate Company attacking defenseless underwater settlements unprovoked.

They seemed to prefer targets capable of fighting back: fierce and bloodthirsty opponents like the shagin, for instance. Home-dwelling peoples like the merfolk held no interest for them.

In short, they were alarming, but not terrifying. To the merfolk, they were considerably less of a threat than the ixiray.

As such, Nephrys had maintained respectful wariness around Aige and her company, but not genuine fear. These undead had no particular reason to trouble the merfolk.

The name Megaman Tiga, however, was a different matter entirely.

In recent times, that name had spread through the ocean like a tsunami, and not as mere metaphor.

He had exiled an entire kingdom, carved a new sea where its land had been, and caused the sea level to drop by nearly half a meter.

A change of that magnitude in the world's waters sent every ocean race scrambling for answers.

He had dug up an entire kingdom's worth of land. Was he even human?

No, said the latest reports. He was a lich.

And that particular lich had built himself a small island on the open ocean and massacred an army of githarks, reducing twenty dragons and thousands of soldiers to carcasses under an astounding meteor shower. Then he had gone to the dragons' island and captured the entire clan: a dozen-odd dragons in various colors, bound and left lying on the beach to dry in the sun. The notoriously short-tempered beasts had submitted without resistance, which meant they'd been thoroughly and completely broken.

The dragons might look impoverished by comparison to their reputation, and they couldn't dive. They were useless underwater, and the ocean races outmatched them entirely at sea. But the sky and land were entirely different. Marine creatures had no business contending with dragons in their own element.

And yet this lich had gone directly to their island and beaten every last one of them into submission.

That wasn't all. He had picked a fight with Lyon, defeating seven legends in tandem. Word of that had already spread everywhere.

A lich who didn't even flinch at holy light—what in this world could possibly deal with something like that?

Aige disliked preying on the defenseless, but this Master Megaman Tiga had no such compunctions, by all accounts.

Word was that the tiflings had tricked him into signing some kind of contract, and his response had been to exile the entire kingdom. Word was that he had gone to the dragon clan to negotiate a business arrangement, and when the dragons refused to let him strip their hides, he had simply captured them alive.

As for the githarks, he had been the one who brought them to this plane to begin with!

How ruthless. How terrifying.

When Ambrose confirmed his identity, Nephrys's tail had started trembling. He'd nearly bolted entirely.

Horrifying! Did the lich have to pretend to be operating under the Silent Sea Pirate Company's banner, as if he were reasonable?

Nephrys was sweating profusely, but fortunately, his sweat was invisible underwater. He could only hope that three hundred shells of pearl dew would be enough to soothe the greedy lich and discourage him from wiping out the Blue Algae Tribe on a whim. They were a small tribe with not a single legend among them; they had no way to withstand what this lich was capable of.

Aige watched the trembling Nephrys with quiet bemusement. Ambrose's reputation was astounding. She had ruled the seas for years and never managed to frighten someone this badly.

Ambrose accepted the pearl dew with satisfaction, then turned to reassure Nephrys. "Relax. I don't eat merfolk. I'm not entirely sure what people have been saying about me out here, but from beginning to end, I have simply been a merchant. I came today to do business with the merfolk, nothing more."

That was about as much as Nephrys's nerves could take. It was time to let the man collect himself.

Ambrose steered the conversation back to its original purpose. Nephrys steadied slightly, and remembered at last that they had come with intelligence to pass on to the mermaid goddess.

He had completely forgotten about it after the shock of hearing Ambrose's name.

He gulped down a mouthful of seawater to steady himself and asked, forcing himself to remain calm, "Master Megaman Tiga, what intelligence have you brought?"

"Nephrys, are you certain you want to be involved in the secrets that pass between gods? I don't say this to talk down to you. Rather, I have dealt with many divine beings, and the moods of the gods tend to register as natural disasters for mortals. If you aren't a whale, don't swim into the whirlpool."

Nephrys found the logic hard to argue with. "I'll notify High Priestess Ariel immediately," he said. "Please wait here."

He finished the sentence and launched himself forward, swimming at the fastest speed he had managed in his life.

Ambrose turned to Aige with a satisfied expression. "You see? That's all it takes."

Aige nodded. "You're far better at this than I am. If I'd come alone, who knows how long I'd have been kept waiting."

The nickname she had chosen for the Elegiac Society was Mute: she had never been good at talking, and lately, she had noticed that every time she opened her mouth, the atmosphere withered. She was increasingly of the opinion that she was simply not meant to interact with other people.

If the merfolk had refused them, Aige genuinely wouldn't have known what to do. She couldn't very well open hostilities and then propose a partnership, not with a goddess of absolute neutrality. Even Ezdolo had her limits.

Ambrose was confident. Once he had the chance to speak with Ezdolo directly, intuiting what the goddess wanted and working from there should allow him to broach the topic of sharing her faith. After all, worshipers were just a form of currency for gods, and currency existed to be spent.

Then, mid-thought, Ambrose turned to Aige. "Wait, what did Nephrys say the high priest's name was?"

Aige blinked. "Wasn't it Ariel?"

Ambrose was so agitated that he grabbed two shells of pearl dew and drank them in rapid succession. What were the odds?

The high priest of the merfolk was also named Ariel?

Though perhaps that shouldn't be so surprising. Ariel was an extremely common name in the ocean. Coincidental repetition was perfectly normal.

Ambrose had been operating on the assumption that whoever was behind Aiolos wanted to seize influence within another deity's following, and would therefore target someone significant, Princess Ariel of the Ragetide Kingdom being the most obvious candidate.

But the merfolk high priest was also named Ariel, and her position was arguably comparable.

What if Aiolos's actual target was this Ariel?

Aige had arrived at the same thought. "Interesting," she said. "Did you have the wrong one all along?"

"Hold on," Ambrose said quickly. "Let me think."

The troublesome part was that his intuition did not point him in either direction. Without that, he genuinely couldn't determine which Ariel was the right one.

Merfolk were considerably more powerful than the Ragetide Kingdom, and the kouto fishfolk also lived in the sea. Contesting merfolk territory made far more natural sense than sending a follower to go ashore. You wouldn't expect a deranged goddess's chosen to be heading toward dry land.

If this Ariel were Aiolos' target, everything would still make sense.

What if he had accidentally delivered Aiolos straight to his intended destination?

Gods were never simple to deal with. One moment of inattention, and he would found himself outmaneuvered.

Ambrose had always said that fools and lunatics were his least favorite opponents. Clever people operated by predictable logic, but fools and lunatics followed no consistent pattern, making it impossible to apply any standard framework to them. Aiolos was a fool, and the kouto goddess a lunatic. Both of them were completely unreadable to Ambrose.

But Ambrose steadied himself quickly. Wasn't it actually better if this Ariel were the right one?

The Ragetide Kingdom would be safe, and his alchemical factory would proceed without interference. Whatever conflict broke out between the kouto goddess and the mermaid goddess was entirely not his problem. In fact, it was a perfect opportunity to play both sides and sell information for a tidy profit.

Good. More than good—ideal. The burden of Aiolos was about to be transferred from Ambrose's shoulders to the merfolk's, and Ambrose could comfortably go back to being a capitalist.

His relief was immediate and total.

"I'm going to go get Aiolos," he said, in excellent spirits. "I found him a wife, after all. That's a favor that carries real weight."

He took the transfer array back to Sharpspear Phil's ghost ship.

He found Aiolos face-down on the deck, prying barnacles off the hull and eating them directly, shell and all, demolishing each with a resounding crunch.

Aiolos looked up when Ambrose arrived. "Didn't you say you had things to take care of? That was quick."

"I found out something about Ariel," Ambrose said.

The name hit Aiolos like a current. Could his mission really be this close to completion?

He crossed the deck in two strides and seized Ambrose in a crushing embrace. "Bro! You're my brother from another father and another mother!"

"Where did you pick that up?" Ambrose asked, puzzled.

"From the half-rotten fish-man. That's how he talks to the undead on the ship. Is something wrong with it?"

"It's... well..."

Ambrose decided not to try to explain and moved on. "I need to ask you something, Aiolos. Is your Ariel a merfolk?"

Aiolos thought about it. "I don't know. I know what her face looks like. I've never seen her lower half."

When Thanos had shown Aiolos the image of Ariel, he had only shown him her upper body. Merfolk faces were close enough to human faces that Aiolos genuinely had no idea whether she was a mermaid or not.

"You don't even know that much?" Ambrose said, resigned. "Then I can't promise you anything for certain. What I do know is that there is a merfolk high priest named Ariel who may be the one you're looking for. I'm arranging a meeting now. We'll go see her together."

"Thank you so much!" Aiolos exclaimed, on the verge of tears with relief.

He had been dropped into this world and immediately tricked into getting his head cut off. Without Ambrose, he'd still be wandering the open ocean. The man had done more for him than anyone. He truly was the finest person in the world.

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