Book 3 Chapter 28: Confiding in a Peer

++My body was broken. I can still feel the bones moving, as they fix themselves back together. Taste the blood in my mouth. It was years ago. Ten, I think. I was a boy then, and am a man now, in any case. The pain still lingers. Good. It will remind me not to make that mistake again. It will remind me what the price of weakness is.++

- Fragment of Lord Dread’s archives, date indeterminate.

The tunnels had changed since I was last here. It was of no surprise, but it was an inconvenience.

Magic is not alive, but it is not quite dead either. It is a force that interacts intimately with thought and cognition, that naturally shapes itself around the intent and wills of those who wield it. The stronger the wielder, the more pronounced this effect becomes.

I was a very strong wielder. Excluding the divine, I was in fact the strongest in the world. Even the chimera chasing us was inferior to me in raw magical power, though these confined circumstances gave it the advantage in a fight.

“HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW YOUR WAY AROUND YOUR OWN LABYRINTH?” Sakhent asked me.

I decided not to answer. There was actually no good response to that, I had never been able to keep such a magical place from warping against my will over time. Sakhent was simply better at constructing such things than I was. Another shortcoming of mine from being self-taught.

We turned a corner and circled around, somehow ending up fully turning back to the original specimen vault. I could still hear the creature thundering after us, getting closer, and now I knew there was no way ahead. Not until the laboratory reconfigured itself all over again.

I saw a side passage hanging open, single room beyond, and thought fast.

“IN THERE.” I rushed in, as did Sakhent, and the two of us sealed the door behind us. Then we transformed back.

It felt wrong and dangerous to let my ancient power slip back and recede into my mortal vessel, but I knew that the creature pursuing us was too strong and too old not to have at least an instinctual sense for mana. Sakhent seemed to understand the same thing without being told, and in a few moments she was Sethira once more.

“That was absurd,” she whispered angrily. “Why didn’t you warn me that thing was there?”

“I did not know,” I snapped.

“Why didn’t you know?” Sethira pressed. “Are you an idiot? Have I allied myself with an idiot in a war against the Gods? Am I a part of The Great Idiot Alliance?”

I shushed her as something moved outside the door. It was humiliating, to be locked away like this, but necessary. My power was one thing, but I had yet to regain any of the enchanted items nor weaponry that had served me so well during my first war against the Gods. Even a single one would have turned the tides, at least somewhat.

But they had all been the product of many years of effort in my first life.

That sort of time was denied to me now. Sakhent, who was more fortunate, seemed to have retained at least some of his equipment, but was less powerful. In this environment our best chance was to wait.

I did not, unfortunately, have any portable, personal-use weapons stashed away in my laboratory. Then again, if I had there was every chance one of the escaped creatures would be using them against us already. Perhaps that precaution was vindicated.

“We will not need to stay here for too long,” I guessed. “A few hours perhaps. That thing moved around a lot, it seemed restless, and the laboratory will eventually reconfigure to leave a way back to the exit.”

“So we just need to sit around waiting,” Sethira replied. “Like a pair of fucking idiots.”

It still felt strange to hear how mortal her speech patterns were. I took a seat, leaning back against the hard steel wall.

“I miss my weaponry,” I sighed. “Nu’chista was easily dispatched enough without them, but this…being forced to flee from my own creation.”

“I still have my weaponry,” Sethira noted. “It’s just not enough of an equaliser. What was that thing?”

“I have a few guesses. I suspect it was an amalgamation of my previous experiments, which would explain its ludicrous power.”

I had worked for years to make something strong enough to kill a Demigod, and now time had done it for me purely by accident. Life was infuriatingly ironic at times.

“Well it’s ludicrous power is keeping us pinned here,” Sethira scowled. We both froze as we heard it shambling outside, but the door did not open.

That was one feature of the laboratory. To intelligent minds, it was disorienting. To anything far stupider it was utterly bewildering. Hiding here was easier than hiding an ember in a bonfire.

“How long do you think we’ll be here?” Sethira asked me. I considered that.

“We wasted mana fighting the undead. We have wasted more fighting the chimera already. I would say, at the very least, we give ourselves a few hours to replenish our strength, then swiftly transform back and start setting up more deliberate protective spells before engaging the chimera again. Though I would sooner avoid it entirely, unless you have another one of those scythes.”

“There is only one Grimscythe, and it’s mine, you can’t have it,” Sethira snapped.

“Fine then,” I snapped back.

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We sat there in silence for a few minutes.

“This is boring,” Sethira sighed.

“I spent more millennia imprisoned without magic in the Depths than there are drops of water in all the world’s oceans, and you’re complaining about being forced to wait a few hours?” I frowned.

“It’s boring!” Sethira snapped. “I’m bored. Unlike you, I actually enjoy living when I’m not torturing people or doing magic. This nothingness is just…ugh.”

“I enjoy living,” I said stiffly.

She snorted. “Barely. You enjoy whatever you let yourself enjoy. Like some self-hating nun stashed away in a temple.”

“I am nothing like that,” I hissed. “I…” I saw the twinkle in her eye. She was getting to me, and she knew it.

“You’re awfully defensive about it, you know,” Sethira said with a tone of idle observation.

“I have spent most of my existence having basic humanity denied to me. Being told I am something other than a man.”

“So I hurt your feelings?”

“Fuck you,” I snapped. Then paused. She paused too, staring at me in disbelief.

“You just swore,” Sethira grinned. “Oh my. I feel like I just witnessed a miracle.”

“Well do not get used to it,” I spat back. “It was a momentary lapse, never to be repeated.”

Sethira looked at me then. “Why are you so insistent on reining in everything mortal about you all the time?”

“I am not going to say.”

She seemed to have a thoughtful look for a moment. “Alright then. Why don’t you tell me how your existence began, instead? That’s the more interesting question anyway.”

“Is it?” I asked.

“Obviously. Everything has a beginning, and I’ve yet to encounter one that wasn’t important to how that thing turned out in some way.”

I had to admit, she had a point there.

“It is rather…ignominious,” I admitted.

“You’re Lord Dread. You’re talking to Sakhent the Immortal. I don’t care about ignominity. The two of us have met perhaps the only other being in the world that we can have a truly honest conversation with. Do you really want to waste that chance on posturing and obfuscation?”

Another point.

“Very well,” I nodded. It would pass the time, at least. And perhaps help me get information out of her.

“I was born in a village that did not have a name. It was before there were enough human settlements, and enough human interconnectivity, for naming individual ones to be useful. My tribe were a primitive people, though they were not as violent and savage as Garamon historians would likely assume. The world was more peaceful then, I must admit.”

“There were no wars?” Sethira asked.

“Not in the way that you would understand it. There were…skirmishes, would be the best word. But mostly, human conflict was the constant battle to endure nature’s wrath. Even the Gods were docile and distant back then.”

“They were?” She cut in.

“Yes, relatively. People still knew about them, and prayed to them, but Godtouched were rare, and true Demigods were uncommon. I imagine there is some limit to their power because of this, something that must have changed since then to let them act more liberally.”

“Number of worshippers?” Sethira guessed.

“A likely explanation. In any case, my life was peaceful, but interrupted from the earliest memories I have by my…abilities.”

Sethira fell dead silent at that, listening intently.

“I could see magic from before I could talk. Could manipulate it just as early. It always did as I wanted it to, always behaved in precisely the ways I wished. Instinctual. Sub-instinctual. Like the mana was my own limb.”

She nodded, somewhat. “I…had similar experiences growing up. Though different in situation. I always knew what mana was, it was taught to me as a child. The first time I used magic was the first time my people’s High Priest explained what it was.”

“The first time I used it was the first time I tried to make the pretty lights move,” I replied. “And they just…did.”

Sethira stared at me. I got the impression that she was speechless.

“Well, my people were superstitious about magic. They did not believe the lights I saw were anything natural, instead assuming I was in consort with evil spirits. When my powers grew enough to produce physical effects, they became even more convinced. One day they simply took me out with them for a hunting trip and struck me down.”

Sethira hissed at that, like a wounded animal. “Idiots,” she growled. “Idiots!” I studied her rage, realising that it was genuine. Her face was starting to visibly redden even beneath her natural, bronze-coloured skin. “A treasure like that and they…” She choked off, apparently mastering herself. “...How did you survive?”

“Luck,” I replied. “Scavenger dogs fell upon me. I was still alive when they tried to make me into a meal, and in my death throes I reached out to seize their lives and dragged them into my own body. Vital energy restored my broken bones and re-knitted my torn flesh. It was, I believe, the first use of necromancy in all of human history.”

“Can you still do that?” she asked.

“Yes, I think so. When I need to heal. I have not actually been badly wounded in combat since my rebirth.”

Not so strange. Liches could get larger and stronger than humans, though not much faster, to the point that we could take a bit of a beating and stand to gain from in-combat recovery magic. As Isabel Vornholt, most attacks powerful enough to breach my defenses would also mutilate me past the point of healing. I had not gotten to test it yet in any case.

“Continue with your story.”

I paused, then did so.

“Well, after that I lived alone. I did not have the choice, nor inclination, to return to my village. They had turned on me. I realised that I was alone in the world, and from this I drew strength. I have been alone every day since then, accumulating power, studying on my own, and I have never once regretted it.” I met Sethira’s eye. “I am strong because of that, not in spite of it. It was the most valuable lesson I have ever learned.”

Sethira was silent for a long moment. When she replied it was with a measured tone.

“I was born into magic. Raised on it, taught to master it from my earliest days. It was expected that I would succeed my mentor as the High Priest of Itenzhor. Instead I hungered for more power than a High Priest could wield, and used my power to reign as an immortal King over all Orapathaqi. It was your Gods who put an end to that.”

“They were never my Gods,” I told her calmly. “They are, as far as I know, native to Irucci, but by the time they opposed me they had already migrated north.”

“Garamon existed by the time they opposed me,” Sethira revealed. “In a more primitive form, admittedly.”

We were silent for a few moments more. This time, I was the one who spoke first.

“What is it about physical indulgence that has you so obsessed with it?” I asked. “You constantly insist that I partake, just as you do. What makes you think life is so meaningless without it?”

She sighed. “It’s a waste of time to try and describe it to you. The only way you can understand is to enjoy it yourself. Unless, of course, you don’t think your conviction would survive actually sampling the delights you so often claim to be better without.”