Chapter 97 - Dirty Dealings

++Nothing brings back my memories like some good old-fashioned magicianly scheming.++

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

Agrian had to admit, Bagran had power. Almost as much as he did. What was worse, he had even more skill. Every move the boy made left both of these facts more obvious.

His magic was currently shaped into semi-animated serpents, probably some family technique. They were lunging around, serving as both barriers and weapons, digging into enemies and taking chunks out of them by biting down and twisting whole mouthfuls of flesh free from the greater bodies. In warriors, that was.

With the magicians, whose bodies were no stronger than a normal man, they’d just burrow through their shields and plough straight through the torso. Most men fell to the ground in two pieces or more.

Agrian was a bit less messy than that. He could have mangled his enemies just as much, pretty much their whole team could, but why bother? It wasn’t like he got extra points for spillage.

Besides, he was feeling more and more uncomfortable with just about everything he did here anyway. If he didn’t have the option of not fighting at all, the least he’d do is get it done quick and clean.

Not that the dead people he was leaving seemed to appreciate that much. Hard to appreciate anything at all in their condition. Agrian’s victims and Bagran’s had that much in common, at least.

Korig was easily the least destructive of them, but also the most useful. Early into the fight undead had started swarming them. That was, after all, why they’d brought the boy. In the ruins he’d panicked and been overwhelmed, and faced with such unknown enemies that his own powers had failed him. Now he was prepared and mentally strong, and Agrian got to see for himself how potent magic could be when used against a thing it was specialised in killing. Bright light that almost felt like it was threatening to sear out Agrian’s own eyes shone, and everything it touched seemed to dissolve.

Everything undead at least, and that was just fine for their purposes. Especially Tross. He wasn’t as skilled as Agrian or as powerful as Bagran, and defending while attacking, at least against this kind of enemy offence, was beyond him.

With Korig taking care of the reanimates, though, his power did its work. Enemy warriors fell stumbling or screaming, limbs locked and eyes bulging as he sent misery deep into their very core. Illusion magic of this level was, Agrian had to admit, quite beyond him, and the boy wasn’t shy about using it.

Actually, whatever the opposite of shyness was, that was Varnel Tross. He was breathing harder with every fallen enemy, and Agrian noticed he was going out of his way to kill them as they dropped.

Right. Battlemages tended to attract that…sort.

At least he was on their side.

Without him, without any one of them in fact, they’d be on the backfoot and losing hard. As things were, they were enjoying the advantage. For now. Agrian was far from a veteran, but he fancied that he’d had a decent amount of experience in combat so far. Enough that he could still see which way the wind was blowing.

Agrian was getting tired. His comrades were getting tired. They were pacing themselves, even Bagran now, and each of them was a prodigy of the usual Winzorth-grade excellence Agrian had come to take for granted. Even still, their power was finite and it was running drier with every spell each of them threw out. They only had so many more left.

The enemy had this problem too, in theory. Except they were numerous enough that stamina didn’t seem to matter. Maybe killing them faster would have been the natural solution, except there were so many undead emerging to soak up magic now that even with Korig thinning them, it was hard to get at the magicians and warriors.

Step by step, Agrian’s group was being driven back. He was starting to feel that itch, the urge to flee as his gut told him danger was pressing close.

He was feeling it, and his brain was agreeing with his gut. Helping Isabel was one thing, and he really hoped that poor serving girl didn’t die, but he didn’t want to throw his life away over this.

Risk it? Sure. Not sacrifice it, and sacrifice was looking more and more like a done deal as they fought. It wouldn’t be long now before the enemy won.

“We need to cut and run,” Agrian hissed to his comrades.

“Right,” Bagran agreed instantly. No surprise there, the boy hadn’t ever struck him as especially brave. There were more difficulties from the other two.

“We can’t!” Korig snapped. “Not again, I won’t run again, not from the undead!”

Varnal didn’t even bother articulating a response, just made weird, animal noises as he sent another magic missile out to take a man’s leg off. Agrian found both reactions about equally concerning.

If he was found to have led an impromptu attack on the rebels, he doubted anyone would care all that much. If the attack resulted in injury or death among his comrades, though, then there’d probably be a damned court martial.

He didn’t think Baron Agrian Vornholt had that much influence that he could afford one of those, either.

“Would the Gods want you to throw your life away like this?” He asked Korig, then winced as something powerful struck his shield. Either the necromancers were getting stronger, or he was getting weaker. Neither possibility was too assuring.

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Fortunately, his words were sinking in at least and Agrian saw Korig waver.

“And you,” he snapped towards Varnal. “Do you really think this is going to be your last chance to take them out? Once it’s found out what you did here, you’ll probably be offered a place in some special task force like me and Bagran.”

Agrian didn’t actually think that would happen, such forces tended to value reliability over raw power, but he saw no reason to let the boy know that.

“If you both get me killed,” Bagran snapped. “I’m going to come back as a ghost and do you both myself!”

It couldn’t have been his words that finally motivated them to flee, but the timing looked like it added up.

“On three,” Agrian croaked. The count came fast, then they all threw everything they had at the enemy, a burning second wind that shocked the necromancers and turned the undead into ugly smears on the pavement.

They couldn’t have kept it up, not even for ten seconds, but by throwing out so much power without even an idle thought spared for pacing themselves, they caught their enemies wrong-footed and had a long chance to make their escape while the necromancers tried to make sense of the change.

Running got them away fast, magic made that faster still. Agrian felt conjured winds at his back pushing him along, threw down aether below his feet to add spring to his strides, did a dozen other, tiny things that all gave him one or two extra percentage points’ worth of speed. Korig and Varnal were doing much the same thing, while Bagran, the shit that he was, just took flight and disappeared ahead of them at ten times the speed.

No sand, unfortunately. Which meant no sled. They were left to slog it with only what limbs the Gods had given them, but in this case that proved just barely enough.

Agrian had all of a second to feel relieved once they reached the rendezvous point, then the fear overtook him.

“Where’s Isabel?” he asked, looking around desperately, waiting for her to pop up from nowhere and abate his worries. She did not.

“Fuck!” Bagran groaned.

***

“Good afternoon,” I told Sakhent. “It is good to meet a fellow practitioner.”

“You’ve met a lot of fellow practitioners,” she noted dryly. “Though you killed most of them.”

I waved a hand. “Students, initiates and dullards stumbling around with power they do not understand.” Personally I saw no reason to acknowledge anybody who could not perform the bare minimum feat of living forever as a true necromancer.

“I see. And you consider yourself a master, then?” Was Sakhant challenging me? No, I did not think so. Ah. She was trying to understand me.

“Titles like that are easily given and arbitrarily defined,” I shrugged. “I consider myself powerful.”

Actually, I considered myself the most powerful magician who could even theoretically exist, but making a claim like that would naturally invite the sort of comparisons that led to deducing my real identity.

“Another lich, also trapped in the body of a child,” Sakhent murmured. “That is…interesting.”

“You are referring to the timing?”

“Of course. What are the odds of that, do you think?”

I made an idle attempt at calculating them, then gave up as I realised there were unknown variables that left it impossible.

“Less likely than being struck by lightning sixteen times in a row,” I said at last. “How much less likely I cannot yet say.”

“So essentially impossible,” Sakhent concluded. “Therefore, we can only assume that something caused both events, either intentionally or as a natural consequence of whatever it is.”

“If it is the former, we may have more liches emerging to join us soon,” I noted. Her brow crinkled.

“...Yes, we may. That brings us back to what I wanted to discuss originally. Do you want to form an alliance with me?”

A breeze passed through the tunnel around us while I considered that.

The answer had been obvious months ago, when I helped her ritual to completion, and it was still obvious now. But I wanted to be extra-sure first. My word, after all, was a prison greater than anything the Gods could produce.

“Are you a friend of the Gods?” I asked her.

Sakhent’s eyes suddenly resembled great pits leading to something deep and terrible.

“I was. Thousands of years ago, when the Gods of my own country still lived, I was their greatest servant, and I fought in their honour against the usurper-kings and all their hordes. Those usurpers are gone now, but in their place I find something worse still. Foreign invaders strangling my homeland for every resource. Invaders who killed its ancient Gods and seek now to replace them with their own.”

I let her speak, committing everything to memory, and when she was finished I had only a single point of clarification that demanded addressing.

“So Gods can be killed?”

She was irritated that I took only that away, but still confirmed it with a nod. “Gods can be killed, though I was not present when this happened and so I can’t tell you how.”

That did not matter to me, if it was possible I would find a way.

“I accept your alliance,” I told her. “On three conditions.”

She bristled, readied instantly to contest and mitigate them. Not an unreasonable reflex at all, of course. “Name them.”

“First,” I began. “I would like to exchange information. There are secrets to Estalian necromancy that I do not know about, and I want you to educate me in them so that I may add to my own power. This benefits you, obviously, by providing you a superior partner.”

“The others?” she asked, neither agreeing or refusing.

“The second is that I will be the one in charge of our alliance,” I continued. “The third, that we must dedicate ourselves to destroying the Gods of Garamon, whether or not they continue their offensive into Estalia for the duration of it.”

“Your second condition is utterly absurd and I won’t accept it,” Sakhent snapped at once. “Take that out of your calculations and we can, at least, discuss the remaining two.”

“It is how I have always operated,” I pressed.

“And it’s also how I have always operated, but I am willing to compromise when dealing with a…peer. If you aren’t, then I see no value in working together anyway.”

I had expected this reaction. Indeed, I had deliberately caused it by adding my suggestion of being in charge to have her focus on rejecting that rather than argue about the specifics of the others. I made a show of reluctance as I nodded.

“Very well then,” I said at last. “...Partner.”