Chapter 1: The Next Step

++I must confess to some pleasure at reuniting with my family again, parts of it at least. Victoria, though an infuriating gremlin, was magically gifted enough to be worth my time, and while mother and father were frothing misogynists I still enjoyed having them fawn over everything I did. The servants were sworn to obey me unquestioningly enough that it almost mirrored the good old days before my Great Setback. And then there was, of course, the fact that I would be sleeping in a mansion. Many pleasures and advantages were to be found in my family’s estate, but those were not what coaxed me back.

No, I returned for more practical reasons.++

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

Ocean voyages are long, irritating and uneventful affairs that soak up a near-infinite amount of time from all parties involved. They are also, unfortunately, the only kind of voyage Garamon’s military was willing to provide, unless one happens to be heading on an especially time-sensitive mission.

I was not doing that, I was going home.

Orapathaqi had spent the last six months under Vornholt governance, with Agrian Vornholt proving that putting unqualified nineteen year-olds in charge of an ancient city that had recently experienced an extended guerilla warfare campaign, foreign invasion and a world-shaking battle between a Demigod and two ancient liches was not a good idea. Fortunately, it did not need to be a good idea. With my advice, and the cult of Sakhent’s help in quieting down any overt resistance, the outsider’s perspective was that Agrian had near-miraculously restored order and helped repair the city as smoothly as could be expected.

Months later, a ship had arrived and given him, myself and many of Garamon’s other deployed soldiers the chance to return to our homeland. We had taken that opportunity.

But ocean voyages werelong, irritating and uneventful affairs, and this one had soaked up a full month of time from all parties involved. All told I had come dangerously close to having my sixteenth birthday at sea. As things were, it would come about a week after we made shore.

There were some benefits to be found, however. Spending so long isolated on a ship did little to expand my worldly knowledge—I could not even pay my test subject a visit for fear of blasting out the magical beacon that was Lord Dread—but it gave me the chance to continue practicing my reincarnated Vessel’s magic and honing that instead.

I had recently passed a limit of twenty thousand vis for my maximum output in mortal form. This was an extremely high amount, among Garamon’s magicians. In fact, it was an amount that was considered outright impossible for a person of my age, and left me close to the twenty-five-thousand vis border at which I would be breaking through into the lower end of second class Highmage.

And it felt like nothing at all. I had touched the power of Lord Dread again, and done so recently. I had felt the power of a Demigod held in my grasp and watched him squirm impotently before my strength.

Compared to that, being equal to eight normal magicians rather than six was not much to crow home about.

Docking was a long and arduous process which I had no time for. Fortunately, being a Garamon noble had its perks. I departed fast and practically sprinted past regulations, trusting in the larger portion of the army left behind to explain who I was and why I could do whatever I wanted.

Finding a carriage was not difficult, I had requisitioned a fair amount of funds to make my travel as easy as possible. I was past city limits when I disembarked and finally got to test a new magical construct I had been hypothesising about for some time.

The issue with my sand-sled being used in Garamon was that it was not sand. There were different rules working with dirt, and more variation in texture. It took me a few embarrassing tumbles, which I was spared being covered in filth by only due to my personal shielding, before I perfected the balance of friction and propulsion and was finally able to send myself consistently forwards without tipping over. Even then, I spent much of the journey optimizing my design to let it move faster, with more stability and with more capacity for sudden turns, should it prove necessary.

Flight was still beyond me, for now. But I had plans for that too.

Lachfel took the better part of a day for me to reach, travelling at near to full speed. I considered it an acceptable outcome given my arriving several hours past dawn and having wasted another hour or so perfecting my design. The city grew larger as I skimmed towards it at a constant mile every two or so minutes, and by the time I was starting to feel my Vessel strained and my mana exhausted I was already within the city itself. From there I needed only one more carriage ride to reach the Vornholt estate.

It occurred to me then that I would, for the first time, be returning home alone. Agrian was not accompanying me now, he was busy with his own tasks.

Another change was made evident as I approached the mansion’s door. Though there were groundskeepers out in the front gardens, and the lands were as well maintained as ever, I did not have my family waiting for me outside as I did previously. I felt as though I were simply making my own trip, rather than being carefully chaperoned back home.

I knocked, and the door took a full minute to finally swing open. When it did I saw a servant rather than my family.

“Good afternoon, Lady Isabel,” the elderly man smiled. “Your father and mother are waiting for you in the living room. May I take your things?”

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“Yes,” I told him. “Straight up to my room if you will.” I handed my coat over as I stepped in. “Just do that, I can find my own way up to my parents.”

The noble tradition of having servants several decades older than oneself leading you through your own house at their aged pace was not compatible with my own impatient nature.

I was able to move at a speed-walk by myself, and reached the living room in just over a minute. The Baron and Baroness were waiting within, of course, seated beside one another in armchairs by the fire and smiling up as I entered. In the same room were my two younger siblings; Qaigor and Victoria.

It had been just under a year since I saw them both last. That was not so long for me, enough for a sizable increase in mana and little else, but then my body was mostly finished growing. Victoria and Qaigor, however, looked drastically different.

Victoria was now eleven, and not that much shorter than most of the maids. Her face had lost much of the puppy fat that once left it so round, and I realised that she now resembled our mother far more than I did. Her hair had gotten, if anything, even golder, and her eyes were as blue as our mother’s.

I braced myself for impact, for her to throw herself at me and ensnare me with a hug, but instead she just smiled and nodded politely in acknowledgement of my presence.

“Hello Isabel,” she said.

I was surprised, and caught myself staring rather than replying. “Hello Victoria, it is good to see you again.”

Qaigor was next, marching over to me and grinning up at me. “You’re back!” he exclaimed. “And you’re fat now!”

My eye twitched. There were, apparently, consequences to suddenly stopping one’s stimulant usage. I had gained an excess of ten or so pounds and was still working to fix that.

“Qaigor!” our mother cut in sharply, which only seemed to make him grin even more. He withered before our father’s look, at least.

“That’s enough, son, go and play on your own.”

The boy ran off to do so, breezing past me. I watched him go and resisted the urge to hurl a magic missile after him. Fat. I would kill him for saying that, I—

“It’s wonderful to have you back, Isabel,” my mother interrupted me. She seemed to glide across the room to hug me, which I reluctantly tolerated.

“I am glad to be back,” I replied.

“We heard what happened in Orapathaqi,” my father added, on his own feet now. “Heard a lot actually. Agrian is still there, right? Governing?” He probably was not even trying to hide the eagerness in his voice, and I doubted he could have done so anyway.

“No,” I told him. “He has moved on as well.”

That was regrettable, but necessary. Orapathaqi was beyond salvaging simply because the disaster and resistance it faced had been too great for any of Garamon’s leadership to believe it would be peacefully held going forwards.

“What’s going to come of the city?” my father asked, more concerned for the material matters than his son. I could appreciate that.

“There will likely be a small force of Garamon soldiers stationed there, but no large-scale mining or infrastructural changes of the sort that were planned,” I responded. “The region is deemed too…unstable.”

That, and a Demigod had disappeared there. Disappeared. The Gods must have been terrified, confused and uncertain for the first time in possibly millennia. I had been given one interrogation after another of what I had seen there, and it was only Aryqatan’s words bolstering my story that allowed me to return home even this early.

And all of this was as promising a sign as I had ever witnessed. Sixteen years after my rebirth, and I had frightened the Gods. It was just a few short steps between that and overthrowing them.

But I was getting ahead of myself.

“Agrian, I take it, has returned to the Winzorth Institute for now,” I added. “He is applying for the title of Highmage.”

I saw a conflicted look upon my father’s face at that. On the one hand, Highmages were rare and esteemed magicians, less numerous even than Garamon’s aristocracy. On the other hand, they were still magicians. I did not think the Baron Vornholt would ever be pleased to hear his son advancing in a field of magic.

“And what about you?” my mother asked abruptly. “Are you applying to be a Highmage?”

“Perhaps in the future,” I replied. “For now I have other things to do.”

“You’re staying here?” Victoria asked, her face becoming suddenly more animated.

“For a while,” I told her, then glanced at my parents. “Assuming that is acceptable.”

My father bristled slightly. He knew full well I was not asking, but, having been given the chance to save face and pretend he was in charge, he forced a broad smile and nodded. “Of course, we’re always happy to have you here my love.”

Mother looked even more pleased. “You’ve been gone so long,” she added. “It’ll be wonderful to have you just around the house for a while.”

“Then that settles it,” I punctuated the sentence with as pleasant a smile as I could muster.

Internally, I was just as pleased. I had come back to the Vornholt estate for several reasons, and all of them would further my long-term goals. Qaigor, my youngest sibling, needed to resume his mana-altering treatments from me to ensure that his body converted natural magical power into physical strength as efficiently as possible. I feared he had already lost a bit of potential power by my taking a break for as long as I had, but that did not mean he could not still be made into one of the world’s greatest warriors.

Victoria, too, was among the most gifted magicians alive, and with my tutelage she would learn to punch above the weight of even her formidable talent. She may one day be counted alongside myself and Agrian among the top ten.

And then there was the final thing, the most significant thing. I had the power of Lord Dread at my disposal now, but not active. It was forced to lay dormant within me, sealed away and buried in the mystical fold that separated my ancient and modern Vessel. I could call on it at will, but doing so would output so much magical power that the Gods would feel it from anything less than a continent away.

Unless I had something remarkably powerful nearby to blot it out, smothering my own magical power with a source that was yet stronger.

Unless I had, for instance, a nearby leyline.