Chương 109: Chapter 96.5 - Unmasking the Adversary

++One annoying disadvantage to being who I am is that it meant a lot of potential enemies, rivals and acquaintances had the advantage of knowing more about me than I did them. The history books only go backwards, after all. And my life was significant enough to be heavily recorded. Then again, the Gods did a fine job of making those books useless when it came to accounts of my own existence. Not that I would ever thank them for such historic vandalism, of course.

++ - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, 'The Great Lich'. 1, 891 A. E. A magic missile whistled by my head, then another one hit the back of my shield. A new shield, granted. A different kind than the other. Usually a barrier spell would hover an inch above my skin, at most. This one was clinging tighter. A tenth of an inch or less, with so little clearance that I could actually feel the magical energy as a constant pressure against every hair on my body.

It was not terribly comfortable, was harder to create and was dreadfully inefficient—I was quite sure that, if Sethira had shot me with one of those ridiculous elephant guns, it would have hurt. But she did not have an elephant gun, and even if she did she would not have used it. Because she wanted me alive. It was not a shield I was likely to use again for years, decades or possibly even centuries. But in this situation it was perfect.

The fractionally smaller surface area meant that much less drag force slowing my pace, and the fact that my enemy's attacks were limited by our same circumstances left its meagre protection just enough to keep me moving. More than once I felt a magic missile fizzle against it, thrown out with less power than even a middling magician of the third order could produce. Like sledgehammer blows. But just about tolerable, through the barrier.

Ahead of me was a winding corridor, and my look changed for the better as I found the path splitting into multiple routes. I took a moment to work out where in the city we were, then opted to move left. It was the direction that would take me farthest from rebel territory, and hopefully less likely to be where Sethira's subordinates were lurking. If the path sharply turned without warning I was doomed. On the other hand, there was luck at play on my success too.

Because what I was waiting for was simple: a patch of ceiling thinner than the ones I was crossing now. Under the building, the sandstone roof of this tunnel network was thinner than it was here. Thin enough that I could blast through without slowing myself. Not true here. I could blast through easily enough with magic missiles, several of them. But I would need to focus and aim well, and in the time I took to do so I would leave myself open.

If I divided my attention to ward off attacks from Sethira while creating my exit, I would find myself unleashing, if I was lucky, one blast at the stone for every two I concentrated on deflecting. Our strength was just too close. Eventually, her subordinates would catch up. There is always an animal temptation to scurry through the closest, most inviting exit, and I knew that was just what my pursuer was waiting for.

I had taken her lightly after foiling her first trap, and she had exploited that confidence to lure me into the second. From now on, every move I made against her would come after a great deal of deliberation. Another turn came up ahead, and I braced myself. What would I do if I were a group of hostile magicians further down this corridor? Hear me coming, firstly.

With how fast I was running it was simply impossible that the sound had not carried its way across these curved walls, they were even deflecting some of the mana waves I sent up to measure their depth. That meant that if an enemy was ahead, they knew I was approaching. As soon as I turned the corner, they would strike at me with their magic. Should I thicken my shield? That would slow me, and allow Sethira to close the distance.

If there were enemies up ahead, she would be landing hits from behind before I could engage them. If there were not, then I would still be cutting down my lead perilously. Perhaps enough that she would be able to intercept me even before I punched through a thicker section of ceiling if I ran into it. Damn. I was second-guessing myself. How infuriating, how exhilarating. How 'emotions I had not bothered to learn the words for because I did not think I would ever feel them again'.

I was caught between the simultaneous urges to get as far from the creature on my heels as I could, and turn around to kill her in some suitably inventive way as an emotional outlet. Neither act would be very productive towards my immediate goal of evading capture, so I stifled the urges. I made myself calm, and think. Second-guessing, that was all this was. I had taken all of a second to calculate every problem I now faced and nothing had changed. I would either get unlucky and be caught, or I would flee.

That was what it came down to. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. My instincts were ordering me to change approaches only because I instinctively hated being at the mercy of something as fickle as fate. The corner came and I moved past it. There were no more enemies, nor was there an opportunity to escape. The ceiling here was just as thick as it was anywhere else, maybe thicker. Should I try it anyway, rather than risk another corner?

I barely kept myself from doing so. As I ran I threw waves of mana ahead to try and locate my enemies where they may be standing, but the results were just as I had expected them to be: inconsistent, unreliable and useless. I was simply not yet adept enough at the technique to use it properly while moving. The sounds of my own sprinting steps, the speed at which I was travelling, a hundred other things all distorted the resulting waves and threw off my readings.

And now the new corner was looming close, without me having gathered even a scrap of information on whether it hid ambushing necromancers or a ceiling I could escape through. I braced myself, turned it… … and found the necromancers. Their magic missiles slammed into my hasty wall of aether, punched through and then bit into my fragile, personal shield. It shattered easily and I felt jolts of… was that lightning? Yes, of a tamed and weakened form, running through my muscles and seizing them all up into uselessness.

I dropped to the ground, trying and failing to conduct magic to counter. Before I could, bands of aether came down around my limbs to immobilise them and I was staring up into a dozen different hands aimed towards me, all aglow with power. Moments later, Sethira reached the scene. The magic that followed was so fast that even I struggled to follow it. Clearly, this group was well-rehearsed.

I was hoisted up, bound more thoroughly before, and then started in the long and humiliating process of being hauled along the tunnel. Back the way I had come. I bristled at that.

"I was heading in the right direction," I noted.

"You simply had your men waiting deeper down this escape route in case I…" I paused.

"No, you did not foresee this escape attempt, you would have all been quicker to react to me blowing through the floor if you had." Sethira looked impressed, and just a shade irritated.

"You got me," she admitted after a moment.

"Completely and totally. I was over-confident." More likely, I thought, she was totally outclassed by a superior…oh why bother, nobody else was hearing these thoughts. If there was a gap in our intellects, it was a miniscule one. Luck made most of the difference in any clash of wits we had.

"Why were your men here then?" I asked.

"... A safeguard, I would guess? In case the tunnels had been discovered by Garamon. No, in case I had discovered them and opted to infiltrate through here. That was why you made it so easy for me to play for time before, you had sent some signal for them to return to the main warehouse and were waiting for them to do so."

"We can talk about all our moves and countermoves later," she snapped. Apparently she did not like being seen through any more than me. The other necromancers fanned out as we went, heading both ahead and behind, presumably to serve as some distant perimeter in case we were intercepted.

"There are other things to discuss, too," I told Sethira. She must have read my tone. Her tension grew tenfold.

"Like what?" I weighed whether to say what was on my mind, and quickly decided in favour of it. Putting aside the fact that I was confident we would not get anywhere fast without acknowledging this—I was now, after all, being essentially forced to negotiate, and so I may as well make that as easy as possible—I also just wanted to confirm it myself. It would make my bruised ego somewhat less sore.

"... Like the fact that your talent is impossible," I told her.

"Not just rare, actually impossible. That you think and plan far beyond your apparent years. That the timing of your appearance lines up rather too closely with the timing of… something else. That you are behaving in ways I would expect from a certain acquaintance of mine, and, pulling back the euphemisms now, that I have become rather convinced that you are in actuality the ancient lich known as Sakhent." The words fell between us like they were heavy and hard, practically cracking the stone floor underfoot.

Sethira took her time responding. Then she turned to the one man still with us, a guard rather than a necromancer, and calmly raised her hand to the stunned, staring man's head and put a magic missile clean through his skull. He was dead before he hit the floor.

"Don't say that outloud," she told me. It was all the confirmation I needed.

"Okay," I replied. Then I waited some more as Sethira seemed to struggle with speaking. I wondered if I would ever do that, should I choose to reveal my own identity. Wrestling my own instincts as I overcame the silence I had spent so long getting used to. And I was quite sure that Sethira had spent a long time being silent about this, as long as I had, perhaps longer. I was starting to piece together just what had happened with that ritual I interrupted.

"Yes," she said at last. We were long past the corpse now, though in a few minutes the men behind us might stumble onto it and rush ahead. That would interrupt our conversation, best to speak fast.

"I am pleased to meet you," I began.

"Sakhent the Doom Lord, I believe was your full title?" It was no 'Lord Dread', but then Sakhent was no me.

"You're not a normal girl either," she said after a moment.

"Who exactly are you?" I knew instantly that she regretted asking, realising that she had now given away not already knowing herself.

"A fellow escapee of death," I said vaguely.

"The specifics will not matter for a long time. Not until you have shown me how to replicate with my former power what you seemed to have done with your own back in those ruins." Sakhent looked irritable for a moment. Then I saw the glint of opportunity in her eyes.