Chapter 3: Dismissal
Dawn came. Allen had spent the entire night thinking, drifted off sometime before the sky lightened, and then jerked awake in a cold sweat. The sun was already up. He dressed quickly and went downstairs.
The servants were already on their feet, standing beside the dining table. Evan glanced at Allen as he came in and said, "Eat first. I'll have something to discuss with you after."
Allen sat down with dark rings under his eyes, a little unsteady, and murmured his assent. The servants had prepared oat porridge and eggs. Evan sat across from him in a long black robe and deep cowl, keeping himself wrapped in shadow. Allen knew what he was looking at — a lich. The transformation had succeeded.
The cowl wasn't strange. A lich was little more than skin over bone; Evan probably didn't want to unsettle anyone. What Evan hadn't anticipated was that Allen was already planning against him. He was simply too young to see it. The servants stood nearby with unreadable expressions, watching the two of them, as Evan lowered his head and ate.
Behind his back, one of the servants let something cross his face — a hatred cold enough to cut — before his expression smoothed over again, as though that moment had never happened.
Evan found the whole experience odd. A lich shouldn't need food, shouldn't derive anything from it. But he clearly had an appetite, and when he swallowed he could feel his stomach and intestines working. This lich body of his was strange. Perhaps it was the universe compensating him for the missing soul vessel.
What he didn't notice was that as the food went down, the circulation running through his organs quickened, as though dry wood had met spring rain. His body broke down what he'd eaten with unusual speed. For a moment his heart beat stronger, pushing nourishment outward through his limbs. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, his body felt a little more solid.
When they had both finished, Evan said, "Taudet — you and Toni and the others are not to come in here without my permission. You may go."
Taudet answered respectfully and withdrew. Evan turned the sword-cane over in his hands and looked at Allen. "Allen. How many years have you been with me?"
"Five years, Master."
"Five years. That's not nothing." Evan kept turning the cane, his tone unhurried. "I've gotten myself into some trouble lately. There may be a serious reckoning ahead. Go somewhere quiet and wait it out."
Allen's heart lurched. Inwardly he nearly laughed with relief — he had spent the whole night constructing excuses to get away, had even contemplated going straight to the Creationist Church, and here was his master telling him to leave on his own. For just a moment something else moved through him, something close to guilt. But Nicholas Andrew had already made himself a heretic marked for destruction. That flicker of feeling vanished almost before it arrived.
He arranged his face into stubbornness. "Master, I'm not leaving. I'll face this alongside you."
Evan, having no idea what Allen was actually thinking, felt a small warmth at that. But he understood his own situation: this was his last stand here, and after it he would abandon the castle and move west. His soul was still an Earth person's soul, and it didn't run cold enough to drag innocent people down with him.
"I appreciate the thought," Evan said, his tone carrying a trace of something gentler. "But I know what I'm doing. The Holy Inquisition won't get the better of me. We'll meet again when things settle down."
Still not fully at ease, he let Allen take his pick of materials from the stores, along with some gold coins — not knowing that in doing so he was equipping an enemy.
Once Allen's affairs were arranged, Evan called the servants in and gave them gold coins as well, then dismissed them all. He did it partly because he couldn't bring himself to let them get caught up in what was coming, and partly because their absence would make certain preparations easier.
He sent the three servants off together with Allen. There was no settlement within a hundred li, and magical beasts were thick in the surrounding country. They would be traveling along the forest's edge; with Allen looking after the servants, they ought to be safe enough.
What Evan didn't know was that they had barely gone twenty or thirty li before Allen made his move. A Shadow Arrow, and Toni was dead before he hit the ground. Taudet and the remaining servant bolted in opposite directions into the trees.
Allen ran down the second servant and finished him. Then he turned to find Taudet. Taudet knew he couldn't outrun a mage, but he wasn't ready to give up. He was certain this had all been arranged by Evan from the start.
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He pressed himself into a thicket and held his breath. Allen walked toward him with a cold smile, already having spotted him — Taudet crouched between the branches, perfectly visible to someone who knew where to look. Allen made a show of looking elsewhere, taking his time, savoring the gap between them. He held his staff with the tip angled away from the thicket, almost carelessly.
The staff swung back and forth. Taudet barely breathed, praying silently to the Maker, willing himself invisible.
Then the staff snapped toward the thicket, and a cold voice began to chant: "Kavah broshya — Soul Drain!" A green light shot from the tip, and within it a pale grey skull materialized, grinning wide, hurtling straight at Taudet.
Taudet's eyes rolled back. He was already losing consciousness. The skull closed the distance — and then an earthy-yellow light struck it from the side and scattered it apart. There was a rustling in the undergrowth. Allen turned, and immediately let go of any thought of finishing Taudet.
Three forest dire wolves.
One he could handle. Three, he had no confidence about. Well enough — let the wolves deal with Taudet. Save him the trouble of disposing of the body. Pity about the gold coins.
Allen backed away slowly, watching the wolves. The wolves watched him in return, wary, apparently judging that he wasn't worth the risk, and made no move to follow. Once he'd retreated far enough that the trees hid them from view, he turned and walked quickly away. A scream carried to him from some distance back, followed by howling. Taudet was done. Allen counted his coin once he'd caught his breath — one hundred and forty Holy Eton gold coins in total, forty of them from the two servants. Enough to make an ordinary man wealthy; a common household might not see a single gold coin in a year.
But money wasn't his concern. He didn't want to spend the rest of his life being hunted by the Holy Curia. Whether the Creationist Church would actually bother with him was another question, but he preferred not to leave it to chance. The cleanest solution was to go to them himself. It wasn't a thing he was proud of, but pride wasn't worth much when weighed against survival. His mind was made up. He set off toward the nearest town.
Evan knew none of this. He was busy with preparations.
He moved the bronze cannon to the gatehouse, positioning it in a small room just outside the main passage — anyone forcing their way in would catch the full blast at point-blank range. Evan had a great deal of faith in what a cannon could do at close quarters. Short of Legend-tier strength, he couldn't imagine anyone walking away from it.
Once the castle's defenses were set, he began to practice with the blade.
He had the sword-cane, but no sword forms to go with it. He had decided early on to keep his death magic in reserve — it was his last resort, not his opening move. He needed a credible identity, and the rapier suited it. Thin, fast, built for thrusting. Evan chose one technique and practiced only that: the thrust. Forward, from every angle, over and over. He had read something once in a novel back on Earth, a swordsman who trained nothing but a single strike and became one of the finest in the world. He had no ambition to reach that height, but the principle seemed sound. He spent the day driving the blade forward tens of thousands of times, pulling it back, driving it forward again, each thrust given his full attention. The only reason he could manage it was that a lich's body didn't exhaust the way a living one did. A normal person would have ruined their arm inside an hour.
By the end, the motion had become reflex. Whatever direction, whatever the angle — the blade simply went. The flies in the castle disappeared entirely.
Between sessions with the sword he drilled his magic, running through his spells again and again. Not for raw power — for speed, and precision. He didn't know it yet, but this particular set of priorities was already beginning to shape something that was distinctly his own.
He trained alone in the castle, which he had turned into a proper fortified position, traps and all. Everything of value he had moved into his storage ring. The castle itself had become nothing but a battlefield waiting for someone to enter it.
The first to arrive was not the Holy Inquisition.
It was the Fang mercenary company.
The story began with Taudet.
When Allen's Soul Drain closed in on him, the three forest dire wolves had appeared and driven Allen off. Allen had assumed Taudet wouldn't survive them. He had assumed correctly, or very nearly — but not quite.
Taudet had been unconscious when the wolves closed in. He came to in a fog of pain. Hot breath hit his face from inches away, rank with the smell of blood and saliva. One wolf loomed directly over him. Another had his ankle in its jaws. A third stood to the side, watching. The moment he moved, the wolf above him opened its mouth wide and lunged for his throat.
He screamed.
An arrow punched through the wolf's open mouth. The animal lurched back with a howl and crashed to the ground. The other two released their hold and fell back several steps, pale blue eyes fixed on whatever had fired the shot. From behind a tree stepped four figures: a woman with fire-red hair, tall and lean in close-fitting clothes, her skin roughened by weather, a bow already raised with a second arrow nocked. She was striking in her way, for all that. Behind her came three others in single file — a mage gripping a staff, and two men. Seeing the remaining wolves, the mage began to chant in a raised voice. Both animals lunged forward, yellow light crackling between their claws, yellow light forming in their open mouths. The mage's staff swept sideways and a wave of grey-black smoke crashed into them with a sound like a thunderclap, sending both wolves flying.
They hit the ground rolling. Before they could find their feet, the red-haired woman loosed again — white light along the shaft, arrow driving straight for the nearest wolf's skull. The two men moved at the same moment: one sent a battle axe spinning through the air trailing red light, the other broke into a sudden burst of speed that left after-images in his wake, his greatsword shining silver as it bit into the second wolf. Between arrow and axe and blade, all three dire wolves were dead within seconds of each other.
Only then did the four of them look at Taudet.
He was alive, barely, left foot soaked in blood, still too shaken to properly register where he was. The man with the greatsword walked over and looked at his foot, brow drawing together slightly, then reached down.