Chapter 123 - Book 2 Epilogue I

++Chaos and disaster can make room for so many opportunities.++

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

Agrian woke up screaming. For a moment he didn’t know where he was or how he’d gotten there, his body just thrashing on instinct as his brain soaked in the darkness, the near-walls, and told him he was in some cell. The memories of Nu’chista’s rampage ran through his brain like someone was syringing them into it, and by the time he’d oriented himself with the memories of what he’d done before sleeping, he was already flushed with enough adrenaline to stave off a week of sleep.

It was fortunate, then, that he’d already slept for quite a long time

He rolled onto his side and looked around the room. His room. By some ridiculous, unfair miracle, Agrian’s stolen chamber had been one of the few buildings in Orapathaqi left completely untouched by the clashing of Demigods and liches in the skies above. The worst you could say for it was everything had been rendered a bit dusty, on account of all the trembles shaking debris free of its ceiling.

All of that was tertiary to the most important thing he saw, though. The thing seated beside his bed and gazing down at him with eyes like a perched falcon.

Isabel looked entirely unhurt, despite the recent chaos. She even had a new, pristine dress.

“You are awake,” she noted. “Good. Are you injured?”

Agrian sat up with a groan and gave himself a once-over, though he already knew he was fine.

“No,” he grunted. “Just my pride. I, uh. I saw Sakhent fight again. You knew that though, right? You’ve been…working with him.”

Agrian suddenly felt like throwing up. Gods, he had all these lines prepared in his head for when he finally confronted Isabel, all these questions and demands. None of them were coming out now. It felt like all the right words were sitting trapped in the back of his mind.

What made it worse was how blank Isabel’s face was, like it was a face-shaped mask she’d strapped to her head rather than a thing of living tissue.

“I do not know what you are talking about,” she told him. Agrian smashed his hand into the wall, not even feeling the pain of it.

“STOP FUCKING LYING TO ME!” he roared, anger exploding right out of him all at once.

Isabel didn’t flinch. She didn’t even get that hard look she sometimes did when you pushed back at her, just kept eying him.

Agrian made himself calm down so he could say something more productive.

“I know what’s going on here,” he said slowly. “That lich, the second one. The one that killed Nu’chista. I know what it was. Who it was. I know why it showed up to fight when it did.”

He saw that rare expression on Isabel’s face, the growing panic as she realised he knew something she’d wanted to stay hidden.

Agrian felt like a shark smelling blood. He lunged.

“You’ve bound fucking Lord Dread, haven’t you?” He accused his sister. “I don’t know how, I don’t know when, but you managed to trap the most powerful lich in history under your command. Some creature from the abyss. That’s the only explanation.”

He knew it. Agrian was far from an expert on liches, or necromancy, but he’d seen the power Sakhent wielded, seen even a Demigod fall short of him. Then he’d seen Nu’chista handily win a fight against even that magic. Only a Demigod could possibly have beaten Nu’chista as he was.

And failing that, the only answer left was that it had been the devil himself.

Isabel looked like her eyes were attempting to quite violently escape from their sockets. Her face started quivering like it was being pulled in fifty different directions at once. Her hands turned, instantly, into fists clenched so tight that Agrian thought the knuckles might break under their own grip. She glared at him like he’d just committed the most grievous insult she had ever experienced.

And Agrian held her glare, matching it with interest. He was sick of Isabel’s tantruming and sick of letting her see them daunt him. If his little sister thought he was scared of her just because she commanded the most powerful non-divine creature to ever exist, she had another thing coming.

“...You are…correct,” Isabel replied at last. Her voice sounded like one lung had gotten into a fist fight with the other, with the winner yet to be determined.

“Not so stupid, then, am I?” Agrian asked. “And…” he lowered his voice. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

He wanted to sob. In that one moment, Agrian knew, he was beyond redemption. He was a traitor to the Gods, the lowliest kind of scum there was.

And yet there wasn’t even a speck of doubt in his mind about what he’d said.

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

Isabel, it seemed, was not quite convinced all the same.

“I betrayed you,” she said after a moment. “I…manipulated you, lied to you—put you in danger. Do not pretend that you are not holding a grudge.”

“I’m not pretending shit,” Agrian sighed. “I don’t hold a grudge against you. I guess I just…don’t see the point. You’re my sister. Do you honestly think that matters so little to me that being betrayed would make me forget it?”

Isabel didn’t say anything, just looked…stunned. Agrian had seen men dying of wounds they didn’t know they had whose faces were less confused than hers.

He shrugged again. “Your secret’s safe with me, as I said.”

There was a silence born between them. It lived a long and fruitful life, growing old in peace before withering to death and dropping at their feet. Only when its body was decomposed did Isabel finally speak again.

“I am sorry,” she said at last. “I should not have deceived you. I…should have known better. I should have recognised that I could…” she swallowed, in much the same way as a woman trying to swallow an especially jagged brick. “Trust you.”

Agrian waited to feel something, and didn’t.

“That’s nice,” he told her. “I’m sure it means a lot for you to say that. It doesn’t change anything though.”

“What do you mean?” Isabel asked him.

“I mean that you hurt me,” Agrian shot back with a heat that surprised even himself. “Do you think that just goes away because you say you’re sorry?”

Isabel looked at him for a long while, her face unreadable. Then she turned and left.

Agrian rolled back over and tried to get some more sleep.

***

Aryqatan’s job had been pretty easy in the past. She hadn’t thought it, she’d always considered herself to be bearing an unduly heavy burden. She had been a fool. This, what she was doing now, this was work.

And it was too much for one Demigod to handle.

It would have been easier to count the buildings that weren’t destroyed. Whole streets had been churned up and distributed across dozens of city blocks, thrown around like supersonic canister filling. Roofs caved in, statues pulverized, fountains cracked clean in half if they weren’t erased outright.

The worst of it was in one of the central districts, quite near to the great cavity torn into the city’s skin that exposed the crypts below. That was where the fireball had emerged, the really big one Aryqatan had seen only for brief moments in the air. Around that, the very stone itself had been melted.

What parts of it that hadn’t been vaporized right into the air, at least.

A Demigod was made with care, and for a purpose. They were infused with the power of…well, a God. A little sliver of divinity lodged in their heart from infancy. The pinnacles of magic that any human might hope to achieve with one-in-a-billion talent and a life of endless study were surpassed by the least of Aryqatan’s kind almost accidentally. Power was not something to be strived for, as a Demigod. It was something you were entitled to.

And it did not help very much when it came to doing paperwork.

There were a thousand things to report. A million. Big things, like the withdrawal from whole regions of Orapathaqi, to littler things, like individual men’s lives being lost. And then the inconsequential, tedious things that felt like the business of petty clerks and administrators, but had suddenly demanded Aryqatan’s attention with a practical necessity that overpowered any divine magic.

Ammunition had been destroyed in the fighting, vast masses of it. Enough that it was now a question whether Orapathaqi could even be held at all.

Or rather, enough that it would have remained a question even if they had confirmation those liches were gone.

Which they didn’t.

That was another thing Aryqatan had to deal with, the creeping knowledge that she might just…die. Now, in five minutes, tonight, in a week. At any moment. She’d heard of mortal women being scared to walk home alone at night, heard of all manner of common fears and precautions taken by the little people in their little lives. Now, finally, she understood them. For the first time in her life, Aryqatan had to live knowing she wasn’t insulated from the world by power.

There were things in this city stronger than she was, things that didn’t serve the same masters. She shivered.

A knock on the door spared Aryqatan from her fears for another moment. Ridiculously, she almost worried whether it was a lich signalling her for entry. Unlikely. They would probably choose to knock using something many thousands of times heavier than a human fist, and moving many hundreds of times faster.

“Enter,” she commanded, forcing back up the veneer of strength all Demigods were taught to project. That it was now so obviously false only made it more important.

The door swung in and revealed a face that Aryqatan would probably have bet her life wouldn’t be striding into her office. The shock was so great that it just locked her behind the desk, frozen rigid. By the time she’d gotten past her surprise and shoved her sluggish brain back into activity, Isabel Vornholt was taking a seat opposite her.

“Good evening,” she said to Aryqatan. “I am here to negotiate with you.”

Aryqatan just leaned back. “Did you consort with the liches?” she asked Vornholt.

“The way I see it,” the girl continued without answering her. “You are going to most likely take the blame for this situation. As a spawn of Zameka, your loyalty will already be considered in question by the Gods and your fellow Demigods, and many would use this to destroy you so as to improve their own positions. But I believe that I can help with that.”

She’d described divine politics perfectly, and that, in and of itself, was a cause for concern. Humans were not meant to grasp the divine. It was dangerous to let them.

“You are considering killing me,” Vornholt noted, stating it like a known fact without seeming to even speculate. “I would not recommend it. Your situation is nothing short of a disaster. So is mine. My question for you is whether you would be willing to help me escape my current circumstances if it meant you were freed from yours.”

The girl had changed. Or perhaps she had been hiding her real self this whole time. Aryqatan felt a suspicion bubble up in her. “You…you really are—”

“You may be asked about me in the future,” Vornholt noted, with an idle tone. “Do you want to lie, directly, if that happens?”

Aryqatan decided knowing less, in this case, was better.

“What do you propose?” she asked.