"True Ancestor? Glory?"
Hearing Captain Mist's honeyed words, the Old Lich scoffed from the podium. "We're a group of unusual wizards, not the True Ancestor's lapdogs..."
"Where's your reverence for the True Ancestor?" Captain Mist raised an eyebrow.
"Reverence?"
Sir Ulrich's figure shrank further, soon going from over ten meters tall to the size of an ordinary person. Yet his voice remained as booming as ever. "We revere the True Ancestor just as that little girl behind you reveres you... with respect and fear, but not love. Isn't that right, little Niki?"
The banshee stepped uneasily out of Captain Mist's shadow. She glanced at the I-shaped emblem on the Old Lich's chest and lowered her head. "Mentor."
Sir Ulrich was the Old Lich who had brought her out of the Sahara Desert, the mentor who had taught her to start by eating corpses and gradually grow accustomed to the nature of demons.
Seeing him brought back her struggle in the desert. She could almost still taste the beetle's acrid spice in her mouth. Then she remembered what had happened that day in the captain's cabin aboard the Mist, and the despair and sweetness that had flooded her tongue.
Tears suddenly streamed down the banshee's face.
The Old Lich walked up to her and rested a hand on her head. His voice was gentle. "...All growth comes at a price. You're slowly becoming a true lich."
Captain Mist watched in silence.
As a demon of the Primal Species, he had always struggled to understand the liches' sensitive, seemingly timid hang-up. To him, demons eating wizards was as natural as wizards drinking water and eating meat. There was no reason to agonize over something so trivial. But as a Great Demon, Captain Mist was also wise enough not to say the wrong