Book 4 Chapter 32: Decreasingly Unexpected Encounters
Book 4 Chapter 32: Decreasingly Unexpected Encounters
++The continent of Asyran has been home to many kingdoms, some sprawling over plains and mountains, other burrowing through the thick jungles. Garamon has never quite managed to carve out a place for itself there. The modern age, however, brings new options in all things.++
- ‘On the Jade Continent’, published 1875 A.E
I kept an eye on Qaigor as we approached the temple, still not fully trusting my brother to refrain from doing something terribly stupid and inconvenient. Fortunately he seemed to have been genuinely chastened by my reprimand and kept his ridiculous, violent impulses under tight lock and key.
Victoria was of no concern at all, naturally, the girl’s own brush with life-altering violence was recent enough that her own instincts had her almost compressing herself into a ball. For all the damage Qaigor’s upbringing had done to his ability to think things through before drawing a sword, I had to admit that I did wish Victoria had been instilled with a little of his love for combat. As things were her bad habit of fearing death would likely take a long time to break.
I certainly wouldn’t be breaking it before we reached our destination, in any case.
It was a large, square-based structure that reached to a surprising height, a good fifty yards off the ground. Were the trees surrounding it not all of the extraordinarily vast, eighty-yard-plus variety then it would surely have been visible from much farther away than it actually was. The stone was grey and oddly well-maintained. I saw no guards with my physical senses, but a quick strain of my eyes to look at the world through mana alone revealed several blotches of power that could only be magicians lurking among the stonework.
There were not that many, however. And I caught no sight of Gods, Demigods or Godtouched.
This was not so much of a surprise. Assuming Johns’ translation of ‘God’ was even accurate, it did not require the beings I knew as Gods to be considered…well, Gods.
I myself could have made a rather convincing deity right now, in the right culture. Mitigating droughts, helping crops grow, healing injuries—any number of miracles are sufficient to persuade a weak people of your divinity. And when one factored in Lord Dread’s power, the power to shake mountains and flatten cities, any potential argument against him being a ‘true’ God would either veer into metaphysics, or involve a heavy use of pedantry.
That did not mean all so-called Gods were equal. I had stamped out plenty of petty magicians ruling over their own little fiefdoms in my time, just as I had, eventually, allowed the Gods of Garamon to imprison me for a few aeons out of pity for how weak and inept they were. There was still cause to be cautious here, but if nothing else it was a good sign that, whatever this so-called God was, it did not seem to possess the highest quality of subordinates.
We drew nearer to the temple, and by now Blakely, even without my mana senses, seemed to be picking up on the hidden threats. I admired his restraint in not drawing out his heat ray and turning the nearest stone column into so much magma.
Qaigor stepped closer to me as we went. I thought for a moment that he was seeking my protection, then realised he intended to give his protection to me.
My first instinct was to send him over to Victoria. My second was to remember that Victoria had my shielding amulet now, and my replacement was less than one hundredth as powerful at the moment. If someone shot us both in the head with a heavy rifle, there would be one survivor. And it would not be me.
We entered the ruins, as if to punctuate that especially ominous thought, and I felt two things in nearly the same exact instant.
The first was the feeling of all magic being cut off from the outside world. I could still feel my own, Victoria’s, even the trace amounts in Johns and Qaigor’s musculature and skeletons. But any mana from beyond the threshold of this building was entirely beyond my senses. A fascinating phenomenon that I was instantly intent to study more and, eventually, replicate.
But it was only the second most notable event to occur. The first was the great mass of magical power I walked into, feeling it wash over me with a power that almost gave it physical weight. Victoria squeaked and stumbled, and even I found myself slowing instinctively. Isabel Vornholt’s Vessel had become thick and sturdy thanks to all my training, now boasting a magical output north of thirty thousand vis. The entity I just felt was a hundred times stronger.
And then it vanished. There was still power up ahead, but it had fallen to a tiny fraction of what it was before. We were heading deeper still, though now Victoria looked white as a sheet and the rest of our group were eying her with concern. Only the magicians among us, Victoria and myself, had felt that. No other knew what sort of danger was awaiting us up ahead.
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“Everyone else stay here,” I ordered. “I will venture in myself.”
“Why?” Qaigor asked at once, eyes flitting between myself and Victoria. He clearly knew something was wrong.
“Because I ordered it,” I told him coolly. Then I turned to Johns. “Relate my words to our guide.”
He hesitated, clearly curious about what was happening himself, and then obeyed. Moments later I was continuing by myself.
The interior of the temple was not as ornate as I might have thought, not quite ascetic in its decoration but clearly not indulgent on it either. It was very large however, and I was walking for several more minutes in silence before I reached the heart of it.
In the temple’s centre stood a young woman perhaps my age, bearing all the features that I had learned were local to this region. Her hair and eyes were dark, skin pale, and she wore fabrics of flowing silk that I was surprised to find so neatly stitched given the technology I had seen of the locals. She stared right at me as I entered.
“Greetings,” the woman said, surprising me by speaking in the common tongue of Garamon. She smiled at my apparently-visible shock. “I learned the world’s most common language, spoken by its greatest power. Do not be so surprised.”
She seemed to be enjoying this, apparently thinking she had taken some sort of lead in this conversation. Fine.
“You are an ancient lich,” I said. “About twenty years ago you were reincarnated into the body of an infant girl, and have since spent your time growing into that body and developing its power. At some point you managed to re-acquire your old magic and now can switch freely between your lich and mortal forms.”
Her jaw could not have dropped any farther if it had been cut from her head and cast down a great chasm. She recovered quickly, though it was clear that she was shaken.
“You…how do you know this?” she asked. There was no point in lying of course, the specifics of what I had said, combined with my certainty, left only one conclusion.
The servant had gone, and we were alone. My companions had left the temple, cut off from the feeling of magic inside it. So I changed into something more comfortable. The world seemed to shrink as my height increased by a good nine feet, and every source of magic around me instantly seemed hundreds of times weaker by comparison. I felt the wonderful absence of meat from my ancient bones and raised a hand, flexing skeletal fingers.
“BECAUSE I AM LORD DREAD, AND THE VERY SAME THING HAPPENED TO ME.”
I let myself remain in that form for a few moments more before gently melting back into Isabel Vornholt, studying the lich’s face all the while.
Like myself and Sethira, her expressions came naturally. Hers seemed more like mine than Sethira’s, muted and dulled, like there was still some disconnect between her physical flesh and the ancient mind conducting it.
“Are you here to kill me?” the lich asked after a moment. Her words were spoken with a strength of voice and character that I had to admire, given the circumstances. Though she was powerful, even in her undead form she boasted less raw magical strength than Sascithius at his peak. Perhaps she was among the ten strongest liches in history, but she was certainly not even half of my own might.
On the other hand, the new state myself and my fellow ancients had entered meant that conversations like this were shockingly dangerous even for the stronger party. If she entered her immortal form before I could, it would not matter that I was stronger. She would simply obliterate me before I ever called on my own power to counter hers.
But I did not think she would do that, not yet at least.
She had just found out, through me, that there were other ancient liches like her hidden in Garamon. I could not be sure of this next part, but I strongly suspected that she had never encountered another like us even in her own lands. I placed myself in her shoes and imagined what she must be thinking now.
She would know, based on my certainty in identifying her, that she was either not the first ancient I had encountered in this way, or that I was responsible for our reincarnations. My claim to being Lord Dread, given credence by my raw power, probably left her genuinely considering this latter possibility. Did I want to pass it off as the truth?
No, the Harbinger would approach her and reveal what was actually going on sooner or later. Best not to tell a lie that I knew would be exposed.
“No,” I said at last. “But you other have questions, ask them.”
Perhaps the best way to find out what someone knew was to see what they tried to find out. Of course, I knew that an ancient lich would likely be aware of this fact and ask numerous fake-out questions to try and cover up the actual gaps in their knowledge. That was fine. No matter what, there would be some number of actual points of ignorance mixed in with the fake ones. The process of elimination and time would uncover the rest.
“Why are you here?” the lich asked at once, apparently deciding not to play my game. Clever of her.
“Originally, I came looking for a certain artifact that I believe will be useful in…certain plans of mine. Plans I am not inclined to share any details about just yet.”
“Originally,” she echoed. “So not now?”
“Correct.”
“And what about now, then? After meeting me. What are your intentions for me?”
Millennia ago, I would have said that I had none and gone my own way. Ten years ago I would have demanded unequivocal obedience and cooperation with my every whim.
The times had changed me. More importantly, they had educated me, made me more keenly aware of the benefits to a defter hand and a bond of reason over a chain of force.
“I want to come to a mutually beneficial arrangement with you,” I said at last. “I believe that will be more than possible.”