Book 4 Chapter 34: Inquiries
Book 4 Chapter 34: Inquiries
++What exactly Vessels are, and how they are inherited, is not known. All attempts to pin them down to a fact of biology have failed, as have all efforts to observe them as a tangible magical force. The ‘Vessel’ is really just a word for the unknown quantity that is felt only as the amount of mana a person can channel and store.++
- Excerpt from a lecture on meta-magic theory at the Winzorth Institute.
I stayed at the temple for the remainder of the day, with no particular plan to leave it.
On my end, this was no problem. I was killing time in all my usual ways—physical and magical training to amass ever more power—but also soaking up knowledge as I circled the temple and studied its fascinating magic.
Being able to see the stuff of mana has always made acquiring new techniques easy, but not effortless. I was like the only sighted woman in a world of the blind. Certainly, this gave me a leg-up over everyone else in acquiring techniques of painting or sketching, but it did not mean I just instantly knew how to do everything that anyone else could either.
In particular, the nature of this trick was…hard to replicate.
I was confident I would work it out eventually. I was, after all, Lord Dread. But if there was one drawback to my new, mortal form, it was that I no longer had the luxury of measuring out time in centuries when it came to learning new abilities. Not without arousing suspicion among Garamon over my lifespan, at least.
Still, I had plenty of other things to keep me occupied while I worked at the problem.
I had neglected physical combat training, despite my growing physical abilities, and had recently been made aware of what a mistake that oversight was. Perhaps it would not be useful for years, but eventually, with my new physical abilities would grow to the level where knowing how to apply them might make the difference between victory and defeat.
Fortunately, I had a very useful trainer very conveniently located with me. Dave Blakely was sceptical at first when I asked for his assistance in learning how to fight. He interpreted it the way he did most things in fact; as part of a large and complex conspiracy to get him killed.
“You’re not just trying to get me to hit you so you have some reason to punish me for the cloudscraper?” he asked gruffly.
I will admit, my face spasmed almost like his own with the anger of remembering that particular incident.
“We are in the middle of a jungle, the only witnesses are my own family, a group of locals who cannot even speak the common language of Garamon and a man who you recently almost killed in a cloudscraper crash. If I wanted to hurt you, I would simply do it.”
As always, framing the fact in purely logical terms won Blakely over, and we started sparring.
He moved well. Better than I did, though our pure physical abilities were now approximately equal. I had seen soldiers fight before and knew that, contrary to popular belief, they did not actually get much hand-to-hand training, if any. Even bayonet combat was not really taught. Blakely, though, moved differently than most, ducking and weaving with a practiced skill. He would certainly not be taking home any boxing trophies, but his technique was more than merely competent. It spoke of a great city-wide pastime in Cadnich.
I boasted no such competence, myself. It was rather an amusing oversight, but the simple fact was that Lord Dread had never been given much reason to acquaint himself with the gentle art of bludgeoning people into submission. Being a fifteen foot animated skeleton certainly made him physically intimidating, but in practice, anything that could not be immediately eviscerated by his magical power was far too durable for fisticuffs to be of any use against.
And my time as Isabel Vornholt, most of which had been spent as a physically normal human child or woman, obviously had not given me any reason to hone these abilities further.
He also, apparently, did not know how to hold back. Blakely’s fists came flying at me like bullets from a firing squad. He barked out instructions as they did, but I was so focused on the physical application that I barely soaked it all up. Time and time again I was battered and bludgeoned, sent stumbling, dropping, even flying off my feet at times. The aetheric pads I had conjured for myself probably absorbed a good two thirds of the impacts. This was likely all that kept me able to continue fighting.
Qaigor, of course, loved it. The boy surprised me by finding the corner Blakely and I had sequestered ourselves away to train in and watching the affair unfold, cackling each time an especially hard impact landed on me, and going so far as to clap his hands with delight whenever I was launched into the air.
The humiliation stung worse than the pain, and I feared it distracted me from any chance at holding my own. How could I fight when so much of my mental faculties were tied up in envisioning a suitably grizzly punishment for my impudent little wretch of a brother?
Blakely, of course, just kept pounding away like always, a machine. He did not seem to even recognise who he was looking at as he fought, like his body had simply registered a target and was bypassing all conscious thought to attack it. This expression was probably the last one many people ever saw.
Qaigor was deft enough to save his obvious question for once my first, humiliating sparring ritual had already ended. The boy seemed more curious than suspicious, but that did not make his inquiry any less damning.
Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!
“How did you move so fast?” he asked me.
“Magic,” I told him at once. “I am testing a physical enhancement spell.”
He thought about that, then shook his head.
“No you’re not. You’re not doing any serious magic, your body just moves quickly. There were no delays for casting or anything like that, and you’ve moved quick before too, even when you had no time to do magic beforehand.”
The problem with intelligent children, of course, was that they often turned that intelligence towards inconvenient questioning. I considered the cards I had to play here, while Blakely made himself scarce.
Qaigor saved me from coming up with a lie.
“It’s related to that…that thing you did, isn’t it?” he asked. “With my eye.”
I was pleased that he did not refer to it in any but the most oblique terms. My brother was not quite looking at me as he said this, but not quite not looking at me either.
“...Yes,” I told him. Qaigor nodded, thinking about that.
“You…did it with yourself. With your whole body instead of just an eye?”
I nodded again, and he thought about that. “Is that magic legal?” he asked me.
It was an interesting question, and the answer was probably ‘no’.
Did I want to tell Qaigor though? I thought about that.
“Probably not,” I said at last, deciding it would be best to make sure my brother knew about the gravity of letting this get out. “In fact, I am quite sure that the Gods themselves would attack me if they found out.”
Qaigor shuddered, but remained admirably calm. “What are you planning on doing with this?” he asked. “I was a test, right? To make sure the technique worked, now you’ve managed it with a full body on yourself. Are you planning on just keeping this for your own use, or do you have more in mind?”
It was a remarkably good question, one which I decided deserved an answer.
“It is my hope to one day have each and every member of our family be both a magician and a warrior, and then, after that, for each and every human in the world to share that designation. Not soon, perhaps not even for generations, but one day.”
Qaigor frowned. “You’re talking about generations in the future like you’ll still be alive then.”
Oops. “Well, this new warrior’s body of mine is as talented as my magician Vessel,” I smiled. “I am now a warrior of unprecedented ability.”
“...And we age slower the stronger we are,” he finished for me, now thoughtful. “Father always said I’ll probably live past a hundred and fifty. Do you think you might reach two hundred?”
“Perhaps,” I said non-committally.
Qaigor kept thinking, then grinned. “Wait, can people live forever with this? Just swap out dying bodies with young ones?”
“You ask too many questions,” I snapped.
“You always told me to ask questions. That people who don’t want to be questioned are usually just hiding knowledge out of jealousy or fear.”
“Other people,” I growled. “Not me, when I hide knowledge it is the most prudent and logical course of action. Go away now. Do not share this information with anyone else, and go away.”
Qaigor scowled at me and stormed off. I sighed, but did not feel too nervous. The boy could, if nothing else, keep a secret.
An hour later Victoria was standing before me, asking that she be made a warrior.
“Damn you Qaigor!” I snapped. “Where is he? I am going to turn him into a rat.”
Victoria frowned. “I thought transmutation was dangerous and illegal because—”
“Shut up!” I snapped.
“Can you make me a warrior?” she pressed, cutting through my righteous fury with the distracting question.
I bit back my temper and forced myself to give a more measured response, though it was not easy. Every cell in my new body was urging me to find my younger brother and rotate his head seven hundred and twenty degrees.
“I…can,” I said at last. “Eventually. But the process is tricky, long and requires that I tailor it for each individual. I will do it for Qaigor before you.”
“Why?” she frowned.
“Because warriors peak in power after only a decade or two of training, whereas magicians grow stronger for their whole lives. Every day I delay with Qaigor will further limit his magical potential.”
“...Like mother,” Victoria added sadly.
“Yes, like mother.”
Victoria looked at her feet for a while at that. I got the feeling she had something on her mind, something that had been bottled up for quite some time and was now just barely finding an outlet. I waited for her to work up the courage to share it, not coaxing her at all. She needed to learn how to say these things on her own.
Whatever it was the girl had on her mind, however, I never got to hear. Our conversation was rather inconveniently cut short by the unexpected sound of gunfire and screaming.
Victoria went to ground instantly, having been in enough fire fights already to know the course of action that would leave her with the lowest odds of being decapitated.
“Stay there,” I told her.
“Oh thank you for the advice,” Victoria snapped. “I was going to sprint at the gunfire, maybe take the amulet off first.”
I considered chastising her, but the snark was probably a good sign that she was finally breaking her bad habit of fearing bullets. I headed off alone to deal with the newfound problem.
It was too dangerous a situation for me to hold back and hide my body’s new physical abilities, so instead I sprinted at full speed and cleared hundreds of yards in just twenty seconds. When I reached the source of the noise, I was only modestly surprised by what I saw.
Locals swarming against locals, some regional dispute manifesting in an attack that I was just unfortunate enough to be around for.
Well, at least I would be able to test my physical abilities in a less restrained fight now.