The Lich Without a Soul Vessel

"Mr. Johns, this priest you mentioned — would that be Father Lena Storm?" Jessica asked.

"Lovely lady, that's exactly the man. Something of an oddity in the eyes of the Church proper. They say he was born into a minor knightly family in one of the old parishes, trained under his father from childhood in the knightly arts, and entered the church at eight to continue that training. Real talent, by all accounts — and yet at twenty, he switched paths entirely, became a priest instead, and came out to this backwater peninsula to run a small chapel. No future in a posting like this at all, and he's stayed here over thirty years. The Church seems to have simply forgotten him," Johns said.

Evan saw it differently. A man who could endure that kind of isolation without complaint was genuinely unsettling — either driven by real fanatical devotion, having given his whole self over to serving his god, or deeply dissatisfied with the Church as it stood, and yet never breaking from it entirely, which suggested his own thinking on divinity had traveled somewhere far beyond the ordinary. Either way, the man was worth taking seriously.

Evan gave no outward sign of it, but he filed the name away carefully in his mind. Lena Storm. Perhaps ordinary to everyone else — but to Evan, this was not a simple man at all.

The meal ran over three hours in total — a fairly formal affair, despite the small gathering of only five. Course after course arrived and was cleared, the table kept immaculate throughout, service carried out with the strict attention to ceremony that this world's finer occasions demanded, even aboard ship. The food itself made little real impression, though everyone praised it lavishly, offering thanks at every turn, each maintaining the most gracious manner they could throughout.

Evan played the part just as carefully, whatever private irritation he carried underneath. He understood well enough that a formal dinner in this world sat closer to something out of old Earth's Western customs — a proper ritual demanding proper conduct — and whatever else he felt, he kept a warm smile fixed in place, the very picture of contentment.

"My thanks to you all, distinguished mages. I've had a genuinely delightful time," Johns said with a smile, accepting his hat and coat from the server, offering his thanks once more.

"The pleasure was entirely ours. Thank you for joining us," Evan said, returning a small bow, the others adding their own pleasantries as everyone said their goodbyes.

Evan returned to his cabin to find Xiaoshuang pouting. He'd asked her along beforehand, and she'd gone for a short while before losing patience and flying off early. "You humans really do love doing pointless things like that!"

"Xiaoshuang, I don't much care for it myself. But ceremony is the grease that keeps human relations running smoothly. It might look artificial to you, but going through the motions genuinely shapes a person over time. It might strike your kind as absurd, but it's part of what's built human civilization. No rules, no order — that's a lesson your divine kind never had to learn, and it's part of what genuinely makes up human culture."

"Is that really true?" Xiaoshuang asked, tilting her head.

Evan nodded. "A people without rules like these never manage to grow into anything. Don't underestimate ceremony like this."

Applause sounded outside the door, and Jessica walked in. The three students hurried to greet her, and she returned the courtesy with a smile before turning to Evan. "I hadn't expected you'd come up with a philosophy like that. Thinking about it, though, it does hold together."

Evan smiled. "Did you come here just for that?"

"Not at all — I was checking on the students. We'll arrive tomorrow morning. The ship only stops an hour before pressing on to its next port, and after this stop, it'll just be us and Johns aboard. You don't like the priest, do you?" Jessica said.

Evan startled slightly, then admitted, "Caught me. As a necromancer, I've never held the Church's priests in high regard — probably tied to my own history. Still, this particular priest sounds like anything but ordinary."

"How so? He sounds like a failure to me, honestly. Everyone from his generation either rose through the knightly ranks or became a bishop somewhere. He's stuck out here, never promoted at all," Jessica said.

"Worldly rank and reputation probably mean nothing to him anymore. I suspect he's walked into territory most people never even approach," Evan said with a smile. Jessica looked unconvinced.

"Is that really so? You might be reading too much into it," she said.

"We'll know once we see Shrimp Peninsula for ourselves," Evan said.

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At Shrimp Peninsula, Mage Mikoyan had received Damire's letter and felt genuine relief — his old friend had made it out safely after all. He worked out the timing and calculated a few more days until the ship arrived, instructing everyone that he'd go down to meet them personally, and to prepare some local specialties for the occasion. Shrimp Peninsula had little to offer in that regard, though it did produce two things worth noting: dried shrimp, harvested by local fishermen, and the source of the peninsula's name — ordinary enough, no different from shrimp anywhere else. But the second specialty was truly unique to the region — a leafy wild vegetable called shrimp greens, growing deep in the mountains. Nothing remarkable to look at on its own, but cooked together with the local shrimp, it produced a dish of extraordinary flavor, though supplies ran scarce, gathered only occasionally by mountain villagers deep in the hills and sold at a premium. Mikoyan had already instructed his staff to keep an eye out these past few days and buy up any shrimp greens they found.

By his calculations, the ship was due to arrive that very morning. Mikoyan headed down from the mountain early and made his way to the dock. Cool sea air, faintly briny, brushed against his face, sunlight glinting off the distant water. The dock stood mostly empty. He heard someone approaching from behind and turned to find Father Storm had come as well — no company trailing behind him, unlike Mikoyan, just the priest alone, in his threadbare cassock, kept scrupulously clean, though it was the fabric's own worn character that gave it that particular look of cleanliness, rather than anything he'd done to it.

Mikoyan had never paid Father Storm much attention before, though he'd certainly heard the man's name — his predecessor had mentioned him in passing during the handover, though Mikoyan hadn't thought much of it at the time. Only now did he sense there was something genuinely unusual about the man.

"Good day, honored servant of the Creator, esteemed Father Storm. What brings you to the dock?" Mikoyan asked.

"Good day, honored favorite of the Creator, noble mage. I'm here to meet someone. And you?" Father Storm said with a smile.

"I'm meeting people too — a group of Hollingburton students returning from their trials in the Barbarian Continent. Who are you here to meet?"

"Just one person. He's been traveling the Barbarian Continent as well, and sent word ahead that he was returning."

The two men shared a smile and fell into easy conversation. It was still early yet, and these two — men who could, between them, decide the fate of the entire town — chatted idly on the dock as fishermen passed occasionally, each one bowing respectfully to both.

Strange, in its way, that though the town technically fell within Norma's territory, Norma had never bothered to govern it at all, leaving Hollingburton and the Church as the town's de facto authorities — not that either institution took much interest either. Hollingburton at least maintained a regular presence here, given the peninsula's role as a waypoint and the periodic rotation of mages to keep the transport array running, but the Church had done nothing beyond building its one small chapel. The place felt, in its way, like a kind of exile posting for both.

"Have you heard? There's been a werewolf sighted in the hills. Several adventurers ran into it and came away injured — I treated their wounds myself with herbs. Whether their luck holds through the full moon, though, is anyone's guess," Father Storm said. He explained that adventurers scratched by a werewolf sometimes carried an infection, and on the night of the full moon, there was a real chance they'd turn into one themselves.

"I heard wolves howling at the moon last month — an odd sound, not like their usual cry, though I never thought much of it. I didn't think there were werewolves on Shrimp Peninsula at all," Mikoyan said.

"There weren't, until these past two months. Someone's spotted one, and a shrimp-green gatherer was bitten badly enough that he later died of his wounds," Father Storm said.

He knew well enough that Mikoyan, only two or three months into his posting, rarely showed his face in town at all — mages tended to be strange that way, and few from Hollingburton ever bothered visiting the town, given there was little here to interest them.

"That's certainly a concern. The moon will be full in another two days — we'll see what happens then," Mikoyan said. Just then, a sharp sail appeared on the horizon. The ship had come. Both men perked up, though whether it was the ship they were waiting for remained to be seen. The dock began to stir with activity around them, locals hawking dried shrimp, and one man carrying dried shrimp greens caught Mikoyan's eye. He waved the man over, examined the greens, found the quality good, and paid for the lot.

Several other shrimp-green sellers hung back nervously. Mikoyan approached one anyway, and the vendor said, sheepish, "Honored mage, what we're selling isn't real shrimp greens. We tell outsiders it is, but we wouldn't dare lie to you."

Mikoyan grabbed a handful, checked the appearance — close enough to the real thing — and tasted one. He identified the fake at once, laughed it off, and let the man go without further trouble.

The ship drew nearer and finally came alongside the dock. The gangway lowered, and Professor Damire emerged first, spotting his old friend waiting, and the two embraced in a burst of genuine emotion. After a moment, Mikoyan shook hands with Evan and the others, saying quietly, "Thank you. If not for you, there's no telling whether Damire and his students would ever have come home at all."

The students filed off the ship one by one, everyone letting out a collective breath of relief. Off to the side, Johns exchanged greetings with Father Storm, and the whole gathering headed back up together, talking and laughing, while the makeshift vendors kept trying to sell shrimp and their imitation shrimp greens to the passengers still aboard.

The ship would sit in port for an hour, and passengers took the chance to stretch their legs in small groups along the dock, the vendors' calls and haggling filling the air.

"Stay here and rest for a couple of days — I'll host you properly," Senior Mage Mikoyan said to Evan and the others. "This place is remote, and there's nothing fancy to eat, but there's decent wild fare all the same. Our shrimp and shrimp-green stew here is something special. Don't mind those fakes being sold down on the dock — I've got just about every real shrimp-green on the market locked up at my place. Let me treat you all to the genuine article."