Chapter 29: The Duty of Blood
Chapter 29: The Duty of Blood
++Negotiation was something I had to learn as I went, following my rebirth. It is one of the many skills that a Lich King simply does not acquire over the course of his career, not naturally at least. I like to think I did rather well for a beginner.++
- From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, ‘The Great Lich’. 1,891 A.E
Agrian’s power was failing him, he knew that. He could feel it. Beside him the Novice was already running dry, apparently having been far less economic with his own mana and now shivering as his Vessel emptied.
“Hold on,” Agrian growled. “We can still do this.”
“No, sorry,” the boy croaked. Abruptly, he broke off his power, turned and fled back up the stairs. The entity’s attack on Agrian redoubled with only one opponent left.
He gave up on even attacking now, just threw everything he had into surviving a few more seconds, then a few more after that. Every moment he remained in the fight was a small victory, and he knew already that he wouldn’t be getting a big one. With the Novice gone, his chances had evaporated. He felt his mana dwindling. Any moment now it would cut out, any second it would fizzle and leave him at his enemy’s mercy. And then…
Then what, he’d join Isabel in her fate?
Agrian didn’t know why he kept fighting, really. He just knew that his mind was locked on his little sister. He wasn’t even looking at her, and he was hardly remembering the good times. He thought of that dagger she’d plunged in his heart yesterday, of the contempt she’d glared at him.
I wish you were awake. Maybe you could see your big brother being good for something. He kept throwing out his magic, and wasn’t at all surprised when it stopped.
Then the world seemed to explode.
***
The moment Agrian’s magic faltered, I knew I would win. If he had turned and run, Sascithius would have been ready for it, he would have been in control. But the boy had stayed, he had fought, and he had left my former apprentice worried. It blinded Sascithius and clouded his judgement, and, for a precious moment, it left him so eager to snuff out this last opponent that he redirected far too much of his power to do so.
For a single second I was left almost unguarded, and I threw all the power I had been preparing into my arcane chisel. It was the magical equivalent of sprinting head-first into a brick wall, all risk and danger. But it was also the magical equivalent of throwing my whole weight against a brick wall; all force and impact.
The chisel slid in, the spell binding me began to unravel, and in an instant Sascithius was crying out with raw alarm.
“NO!”
“Yes,” I informed him. Then the world was solid again, the ground hard and cold beneath me and the air reeking of blood. I took a single instant to gather my bearings, almost fatally slow. The bloody mists were already closing on me again, and there was no time to form up a barrier that would halt them for long.
Instead, I took a risk. One that was almost as big as trying to fend them off myself.
Coccooning myself in aether as completely as I could, I threw myself forwards with both my legs and my mana. The wind rocketed by me as I flew, crossing the room and smashing against the wall just beside Agrian faster than I could have reacted. The aether I had made here was as soft and yielding as I could create it, which was to say; not very. It held for a moment, broke for a moment more and ate up most of my impact. I believe it was more or less exactly enough to keep me from breaking a bone.
“You’re awake!” Agrian grinned.
“Defend yourself!” I yelled, turning where I lay and raising both hands. I did not know how I had escaped, what had driven Agrian to fight so fiercely, but I was not about to throw away this chance for victory. Aether sprung up just in time to block a wall of crimson mist, then more aether sprouted around it, cut it off far quicker than Agrian had managed and left the stuff isolated.
“You cannot afford to use your power for this,” I told the boy. “It has already started failing. Transport this aether out of the dungeon instead.” This way he could take some of the load from my own, dwindling mana reserves and make them last that much longer.
Fortunately, Agrian did not argue. He got to work quickly and I got to work more quickly still, advancing where my brother had barely held his ground. Sascithius was frantic and growing sloppy, and he was weaker now thanks to Agrian’s efforts at draining him. It was not clear with my physical senses, but looking at the mana around me I could see that he had already lost more than a quarter of his magical strength. I was currently working to make that half.
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The mists thinned and the mana thinned more, soon enough the dungeon was clearing out enough that I could see more of the still-unconscious bodies left within it. A thought struck me then. I had broken free of this enemy by having Agrian distract him, and he was now far more occupied with me than he had been with my brother.
I hurled an experimental magic missile at one of the sleepers, one of my illusion-based projectiles. I did not have the time or focus to waste by waiting and watching for any sign of reaction, instead I threw myself fully into warding off my apprentice.
Fortunately, I did not need to focus to know that my effort had yielded fruit. Their screams came just as soon as they woke up, and Sascithius’ snarl of frustration would have confirmed my success even if they had not.
“You are at the end of your strength, are you not?” I asked Sascithius. “You used all you had stored up to overpower us when we first tried to leave, and everything you have done since then was fuelled by power stolen from our unconscious forms.” In-between words and aether blockades, I threw out more illusory missiles to wake the rest of the sleepers. Fortunately, a sudden surge of emotion of just about any kind did the trick—I did not need to risk failure or unexpected side effects by getting too inventive.
“SILENCE!” Now my apprentice’s voice was reverberating around the whole dungeon, so loud I almost expected the room to tremble at it.
“Do you recall when I promised to let you live if you freed me of your own volition?” I whispered under my breath, knowing he would hear and not wanting anyone else to. For a moment it seemed as though the mists were relaxing, like he wondered if he might avoid continuing to fight me. “You have missed your chance,” I told him at once. “No matter what you do now, or how much you beg, I will destroy whatever remains of your power and leave you buried for another eternity.”
He did not scream this time, he seemed too scared for that. By now all the sleepers were awake, shielding themselves with aether and stumbling from the dungeon. I would have joined them; except for the fact that I had made a promise to my former apprentice. Agrian was at the end of his strength, it seemed, but there were just a few more containers of crimson mist to go, and then the vampire-lich would be crushed.
It was, I think, somewhat typical that my brother chose that exact moment to finally run out of his mana outright and collapse beside me.
This changed things, unfortunately. I still had every intention of punishing my apprentice, but I had now lost the luxury of doing it right away. No, I would have to compromise if I was to guarantee my survival now.
“Hold,” I growled under my breath as I sectioned off another chunk of mist and began moving it to the door myself. Agrian was unfortunately too unconscious to move, so I had already been forced to fling him out of the dungeon rather painfully—and wastefully—with another jet of force.
“Let me guess, you want to deal now that the odds are changing again?” Sascithius' mockery was one of the more infuriating things I had ever heard, but I swallowed my irritation.
“You do, as well,” I pointed out. “Neither of us can guarantee a victory if we continue to fight like this. I suspect you are no more eager for fifty-fifty odds of death than I am.”
“They aren’t fifty-fifty for me,” he countered.
“Regardless, they are higher than you would like and I already know this. There is no point in pretending otherwise.”
He seemed to think about that for a moment, though occupied that moment by sending more tendrils of crimson at me while his mind worked, and by the fact that the remaining apprentices trapped in the dungeon were still staving off his efforts to re-capture them.
“What are you suggesting?” he asked at last, his attack laxing somewhat. I knew that he was just saving his strength, still ready to burn it all on a final assault. I was doing the same thing.
“A ceasefire,” I said instantly.
“A ceasefire,” he sounded amused. “And why should I agree to that? You just want to wait and kill me later.”
“Of course,” I told him. “I have given my word that I will do so. And I am giving my word again, now, that provided you agree, I will not act against you for at least ten years.”
“Twenty.”
“Done,” I agreed, after pretending for a moment to think. It would not do for Sascithius to work out that I was simply surrendering on the timeframe to give him a sense of victory. “But you must do something about the other apprentices trapped down here with me, if they remember this, word will spread, and you will be discovered.”
Slowly the crimson mists began to retreat.
“It’s fine,” Sascithius replied.
Something about that snagged at me. “You should be more concerned about that prospect than you are,” I noted. “And so many of us being sent down into your trap at once is far too convenient.”
The mists tensed, gaseous death drifting just a few paces from me. It was quite an electrifying sensation.
“What are you getting at?” My former apprentice snarled.
“Someone sent us down here, someone has overlooked your presence, someone, I suspect, was intending on feeding us to you. As part of a deal they made, or simply through your mental influence? I do not really care, but I want a name. Who in the Winzorth Institute is working for you? Tell me this, and include them in your agreement not to harm me, and we will have no further issues.”
He paused, and I forced myself to patiently wait and listen. Finally he gave me my answer.
“The Grandmaster.”
A smile crept onto my face at that.
“What’s so funny?” he snapped.
“It would appear that we have just made a new alliance, the three of us. After I have talked with the Grandmaster to straighten some things out that is.”
Sascithius seemed to think on that for a few seconds more, but he did not say anything else. Slowly, the mists fell back, then melted away into whatever space they had first emerged from in the dungeon’s corners. I turned and headed out of it myself.
As soon as I was over the threshold, the fatigue hit me. I was used to my new body having finite stamina by now, but it was still rare for me to push it anywhere near as far as I had with this latest batch of conflict. I found my guts churning as I walked, bile rising in the back of my throat.
But I was, at the end of the day, still alive. And now I had a few more matters to direct my focus to than I did before.