The Lich King Reincarnates as a Baby

Chapter 25: Keeping Up Pretenses

++The Winzorth Institute provided many interesting sights for me, and with considerably less life-threatening danger than I would have found simply investigating sites of powerful magic beyond it.++

- From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, ‘The Great Lich’. 1,891 A.E

Agrian did not actually suspect anything specific, he simply distrusted both me and the Grandmaster in a general sense. This was less than convenient, but also meant that he could not actually put his finger on any of what had been discussed without him. I wondered for a moment what had kept him from simply eavesdropping. The Grandmaster, most likely. The primitive tools I had used for listening in at Vornholt estate would have been easily countered by a full-fledged magician, and certainly one of his power and paranoia. Wariness was his most dangerous quality.

However, in playing the part of innocent student and paternal Grandmaster, we were still left with the smaller-scale incident of how I had handled Agrian’s bullies.

“I’m very disappointed in both of you,” the Grandmaster told us, stern, now, and falling back into his act of talking to two children instead of one. I had to admire how well he buried his real emotions. “Isabel in particular, what you did was dangerous and immoral.”

“What did I do?” I asked him.

He must have forgotten, for a moment, that he was talking to an ancient lich, because his eyes had just the sort of condescending sternness that I was used to seeing in my parents.

“You tortured Rupert Alghar, tortured him! The boy soiled himself and spent the afternoon in our infirmary, it was only a day later that he could even speak to reveal what had happened.”

Agrian started snickering, and I joined in with my brother.

“This is not funny!” the Grandmaster snapped. “Both of you be silent, now!”

I was not remotely scared of course, knowing that I was now the most valuable investment in the Grandmaster’s life, but I fell silent as if he had intimidated me, knowing how important it was to keep up appearances. Agrian did much the same, though in his case the fear was genuine. I saw the boy leaning back slightly in his chair, like he was trying to put up more distance between himself and the Grandmaster.

After a brief period spent inhaling and seemingly calming himself, the Grandmaster spoke again.

“You will have to apologize, Isabel,” he said.

“But I did not do anything.”

“Yes you did, everybody knows you did. You have been learning illusion magic and the boy’s experiences line up almost perfectly with what they would be had you used it on him. His friends corroborated his story, he looked precisely as if what he claimed you did was done.”

“He is faking.”

“That’s ridiculous, Isabel, he soiled himself.”

“He did that on purpose to make me look bad.”

The Grandmaster seemed to be getting genuinely frustrated now, perhaps finding my childish act a little bit too convincing.

“If you admit what happened, you will face no further consequences.”

“But nothing happened, he is lying. Probably for attention. You should suspend him.”

The Grandmaster turned to Agrian at that. “And what is your version of events? Answer without looking at your sister.”

Ah. Apparently our alliance and plans to overthrow the Gods did not buy me freedom from being disciplined for breaking the school’s rules. That would have been amusing at any other time, but given that I was the one facing punishment I found it entirely unhumorous. Agrian glared back at the Grandmaster and I could practically see the thoughts he was having.

On the one hand, an adult who had made him wait and spoke dismissively to him. On the other, his sister. There was no real doubt which of us he would choose to serve.

“Isabel is lying,” he said at last.

“You little maggot, I will obliterate you!” I lunged to my feet, and was promptly pushed back into the seat behind me by a pulse of mana-conjured air that felt very much like my own father was shoving me. I almost knocked the heavy oak chair down as I fell into it, while Agrian continued grinning.

“Then it’s settled,” the Grandmaster said at last. “And we can finally decide on your punishment, Isabel. So that you learn nobody is above the rules of this Institute so long as they study in it.”

I understood his meaning just fine.

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***

Punishment consisted of spending what should have been my free time cleaning out the Winzorth Institute’s dungeons. I did not yet know why they had dungeons, and made a note to find out whenever possible. Not that I would be finding much out for a while of course, I was still in the process of doing menial labour for no reason.

It was another reminder of how far I had fallen, that even a man who knew who I was—who had grown up terrified by the stories of my exploits—could sentence me to this simply because he knew that I had none of my previous power.

There were other students aiding in the cleaning, and I did not care for any of them. As was universally the case, they were all older than me, and contemptuous of that fact. I was working just as hard—harder, really—to get our task done simply to avoid the boredom, but still I found them muttering about being held back by my limited physical abilities.

As if they would have been working faster without the extra help, however slow it was.

The real truth of it was that I was frustrated. The Grandmaster surely knew that I was working to regain my power and learn all I could of this new era, and yet here I was with my time being wasted on his orders.

Clearly, he was paranoid about having the connection between us discovered. I could understand his fear, at least, but I could not help but notice that he was not the one suffering wasted time for it.

Well, it did not really matter. One day he would pay for his slight. One day, they would all pay.

The dungeons were large, and so cleaning them out took an exceptional amount of time. What made things worse was that I had no clue what exactly we were cleaning. The best word to describe it, I think, would be ‘gunk’.

It was a mix of several substances, that much I knew, but analyzing it was beyond me. I missed my old powers more by the day, lately. I was not sure why.

What I was sure about was that it was hard to scrape away, having long since congealed and clung to the stone floors. The low level of lighting only made things harder—apparently the dungeons were not considered valuable enough for the added expense of using magic to illuminate them like all of the Winzorth Institute’s other rooms.

It was this darkness that ended up seeing me drift from visual range of the other students. They could not have been more than a score of paces away, yet for all intents and purposes it was a mile. The dungeons were not as echoey as they might have been, either, which meant that sound did not carry as far as it could have. At least not with all the layered filth serving to dampen it as it struck the otherwise hard surfaces.

These facts combined meant that it was very easy for me to go unnoticed by the apprentices working with me as we drifted apart, and this in turn meant that when the voice began addressing me, it addressed me alone. The others did not take notice.

“What are you?”

It was not a question I was eager to answer, and so I promptly straightened up and walked away from that corner of the dungeon. There are stories about people who encounter strange entities in dark depths, striking up conversations with them in the hopes of gaining something. I knew that nine times out of ten, the strange entity gets the better of that deal. I knew this, because most of the time I was the strange entity.

And I was not eager to turn myself into fodder for someone else’s designs. I was doing quite enough unpaid labour already, just cleaning this wreck, to want any more.

Unfortunately, I did not get the impression that this being had lost interest in me. Quite the opposite.

I continued to hear something at the edges of my senses, too muffled and indistinct for me to really guess at what it was. I knew it was magical, there was no doubting that, but beyond that…Direction, nature, intentions—none of that was clear. It was all more reason to keep my distance. With a strong connection to my phylactery and the assurance of re-forming once killed, I would have risked throwing myself into conversation just to satisfy my curiosity.

But as I was, the risk was too great.

Slowly, I managed to remove more of the gunk from the dungeon, and saw that my fellow apprentices were making their own progress. I did not know what all of them were being punished for, since I did not remotely care and had not asked, but I got the distinct impression that they would be far more hesitant to receive another punishment after this one. I know I would.

Unless someone defied my will again, of course.

I saw that several of the apprentices were starting to bundle up, however, moving closer towards one another than they had initially. Nervous glances shot around, and I started to suspect what was happening right before one of them confirmed it outright.

“Okay, I’m not crazy right? You’ve all heard that thing as well, yeah?”

He looked terribly nervous as he stared at us all, clearly fearing that we would reveal he was alone in his situation.

“Yes, I heard it,” I volunteered. It was a risk, having the child agree with him may well discredit the boy, but I could see from the others that they were all certain they had heard the same thing. I added details. “A strange voice, seeming to come from nowhere, asking questions? It asked them of me, at least. Sort of grating, like it had not spoken in a very long time.”

Were I not in the form of a nine year-old girl, I would probably have ended the debate then and there. As things were the idiots I was sharing space with delayed, and started discussing things amongst themselves.

This was offensively stupid, but not something I could do anything about directly, so I instead headed for the exit. Now that we had obviously taken notice of the voice, and now that all of us had definitely heard it, we could likely get out without immediately being forced back down by our ignorant wardens.

Or so I hoped. Plans often fail.

I tried the door and found it locked. It was a big thing, heavy oak banded with lengths of iron, but not magic. I blasted it with all the mana I could output, having to take a few steps back just to be certain I would not hurt myself with the discharge. When the light faded, I saw smoke wisping from the front of the door. It was still, however, intact.

“What was that?” someone called from down below.

“I cannot break through the door,” I growled. “Something is shielding it.”

“That blast was you?” Another apprentice yelped. “Holy shit! You’re like seven!”

“Nine, and be silent,” I snapped. “We are trapped here, and I think it was—” my voice cut off as a shockwave ran through the room, practically dripping with mana. I raised a hand and began conjuring light from it, fortunately finding the process easy. Illumination is one of the least mana-intensive forms of evocation a magician can perform, and if the dungeon was big, my Vessel was larger still.

This revealed our problem.

Mist was welling up from the edges of the dungeon, rolling in towards its centre and threatening to envelop us all. I could see magical energy crackling through the stuff almost like it was the flesh of a magician, and I knew in an instant that whatever its source was, the being was vastly more powerful than I currently was.

And I had its attention.