Chương 111: Chapter 98 - A Few Observations

++Sometimes, even I must admit, there can be consequences to antagonizing people. On the other hand, the agony of failing to remind my lessers of what they are would be worse than any political obstacle. ++ - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, 'The Great Lich'. 1, 891 A. E. It was all a scramble after Isabel Vornholt's disappearance was discovered, and mostly for unfair reasons. Other soldiers had disappeared, of course. Even one or two magicians. And efforts had been made to get them back.

It was just that those efforts hadn't been very strong. Ultimately, in an army with numbers still approaching five digits, there was only so much care to be distributed across a very wide variety and number of problems. Individual people going missing was not, on its own, a big enough problem to warrant eating up everyone's time for much more than a day or two, at least considering that was about as long as a person normally survived in captivity. But not for Vornholt.

Vornholt was a Baron's daughter, a special, priceless little pretty princess, and that meant that when she went missing, the whole world stopped. That she was as powerful as she was, quietly known by most, though admitted by few, to be more than a match for any three first class battlemages in the army by herself, only made matters worse. And when the magical maelstrom was detected, coinciding so closely with her unexpected absence, the resulting panic spread like wildfire.

Laiel Fiq felt all of this keenly, because he was just important enough to be one of the poor sods whose problem this got turned into. Agrian was gone, too, the little shit. Probably already rushed out looking for his sister before bothering to answer the call. That was another reason among the endlessly growing pile that Fiq hated aristocracy. They just did things.

They had this idea of the world, this fantastical land of heroics and damsels in distress, and they'd act on that idea without ever even glancing back over their shoulder to see the ruination this attitude left behind them. Ruination that wealth and privilege always protected them from, of course. But there were more pressing matters now than just complaining and feeling sorry for himself. Laiel whipped his remaining men up together and sent them all onwards.

Orapathaqi was still hostile territory, but Garamon had spent the last few weeks beating it into some semblance of order, and they were now moving in such numbers as to make enemy interference all but impossible. Laiel still kept his men close, just in case. The rebels didn't seem stupid, but they were motivated to a practically suicidal extreme. If one of them knew for a fact he'd die in an attack, he might well still make that attack if he thought he could take out several of Garamon's soldiers with him.

Such was the cause of the army's slowly dwindling numbers. Looking around now, though, that dwindling was nowhere to be seen. Maybe they'd lost one or two hundred men over the last few weeks, but they'd killed almost as many in those raids led by Huit, and one or two hundred was a drop in the ocean compared to Garamon's forces. Only a small fraction was mobilising for this search. A small fraction, but it still seemed to Laiel like there was a tidal wave of human flesh rolling out over Orapathaqi.

He was at the head of this wave, because everything was always his job, and being sent to the closest, but weaker, of the two magical sources. That was a stroke of luck at least. Weaker magic probably meant weaker enemies, and less fighting, right? Laiel was a powerful magician, though still not a Highmage and probably, if he worked diligently to strengthen himself every day, still a good twenty years from crossing that threshold. He would die of old age before reaching the second class of Highmage.

This still left him an above-average talent, by Institute standards. And he still felt bitter about this. The grass was always greener somewhere else, of course. Well as a matter of fact, the grass was greener. There were kids out there with double Laiel's raw power at the same age. Actually he knew for a fact there were kids with ten times as much. He knew this, because he was currently in a search party for one.

But Laiel had long since accepted his lot in life, and he wasn't lacking enough in self awareness to feel too victimised by it. He was, after all, an above-average talent. Things could be worse. And if his team were the ones to find Vornholt, things could be better. A lot better. Men got noticed for that. Even men of low birth, not extracted from one of Garamon's magician families, got noticed.

And if those men happened to have a natural talent above nine out of every ten other magicians, then being noticed could be the start of something big. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. Laiel tried to control his ambitions and focus his mind as the force continued on their way, finally reaching their destination. A warehouse.

It certainly looked like there'd been a good deal of magic tearing through it, windows blasted out to splinters—this city tended towards wooden shutters rather than glass panes, the savages—and with all the air practically reeking of residual mana. It almost made his eyes water.

"Alright, fan out," Laiel called.

"And everyone keep in threes, at least. We don't know how active this area still is." He figured giving a few obvious orders right away would improve his odds of being noted down as having contributed to the mission. More orders followed from higher up as other men, mostly those of better breeding and connections than Laiel, scrambled to do the same thing, and soon he was one of the ones heading deeper into the warehouse to look around. The sight of it shook him.

Corpses littered the place, human carcases strewn about like puppets with cut strings.

"Reanimates," someone grumbled.

"I'd bet twenty crowns on it." Laiel wouldn't have bet against it, all the bodies looked to have fallen suddenly and instantly, with no evidence of the clumsy death spasms that a living thing took on as it drew near to the end. In all likelihood, they'd died long ago, then been marched here after getting raised back up with necromancy. Laiel's lip curled. Disgusting magic. Desecration was what it was.

He wasn't a good guy, and his role in the army was mostly self-serving, but he had to admit sights like this reminded him about the necessity of what Garamon was doing. But it wasn't the only sight that caught his attention.

"That floor over there," he nodded to a section of absolutely mangled stonework that looked as if someone had sealed a barrel of dynamite under sandstone slabs before detonating it for a laugh.

"What caused that?"

"Battle damage," someone shrugged.

"There was definitely a fight here." Most of the others moved on from it, looking around for exits rather than studying the particulars. Laiel focused on the ruptured stone instead. Something about it… it just struck him as wrong. But he was subtle about it too, because if he had a clue here, he wanted to keep it from getting out. Being noticed was one thing, but on the off-chance he hauled Isabel Vornholt back to base himself…

well, that was the sort of thing that ended a man's career with some cushy, high-paying job tutoring magician brats or magically landscaping a Baroness' garden. The sandstone was definitely broken from above, which ruled out some underground mine going off. That said, battle damage didn't even begin to explain it. Unless several powerful magicians had all accidentally hit the same spot at the exact same time. No, it was a ridiculous idea. The stone here was too thick, too dense.

A man would struggle to deal the damage Laiel was looking at with a clean cannon shot, and as far as he could tell only a single impact had produced this. How many magicians in the city could muster that sort of power? Of the ones likely to be here, only one came to mind. So why had Isabel Vornholt chosen to attack the floor? Investigating further, Laiel was surprised again. He'd expected a hidden basement.

That wasn't so uncommon in this city, Orapathaqi's natives seemed to love nothing more than filling their basements with treasures and then lying about it to Garamon's authorities, too stupid to even understand the concept of taxation. But this wasn't that. Laiel punched his way through another section of floor with a few magic missiles and was able to… do nothing. He tried another section, and achieved the same result.

Every part of the warehouse seemed to be standing on solid rock, except for the section Vornholt had blasted through. Laiel sat with that, and took an embarrassing span of time to figure out what it actually meant. Magicians were meant to be good at spatial reasoning, maybe all his years spent squirming around army politics instead of doing research had sanded off his edge. He still worked out the tunnel was there eventually, though. What that meant, he couldn't say.

Other than to note that while everyone else was searching windows and nearby alleys for residual mana, he was pretty sure he already had an idea of the exact route Vornholt had taken in disappearing. All that left him uncertain now was the timing.

"This sandstone was fractured just before we arrived," one of the more forensic-specialised magicians confirmed after looking at it. Fortunately he didn't so much as glance at the sections of stone Laiel had shot, seeming to assume, as everyone else did, that he was just making estimates of the construction material's durability.

"You're sure?" Laiel asked. He didn't even know why he was so pressed about it himself, yet, but this felt very much like something of note, like something he'd use later. The magician looked offended, that way specialists always got when they received even the hint of a question.

"I dedicated ten years to learning analysis magic aimed at just these sorts of stony compounds, yes I'm sure." Laiel almost winced. There were magicians who'd learn a sizable fraction of everything humanity could do with magic in ten years. This man, evidently, was not very talented.

"Alright," Laial nodded respectfully.

"Just wanted to check." And with that, he had another clue. What it meant, though, he was still not sure. The facts were slick and hard to grab, slipping from his fingers more quickly the harder he gripped them. He was getting there, though. Moment by moment, he was working his way to the right answer. People were already clearing out when the obvious hit Laiel like a solid brick of pure steel. Vornholt left with the rebels of her own volition?

Or, at least, Vornholt didn't even attempt to reunite with Garamon's forces, despite the fact that she must surely have heard and, given her talent, possibly felt them coming when she blasted through the floor. And the fact that she'd run away instead of standing to try and hold these rebels off for the brief moments until help arrived… that left Laial's brain lit up like someone had shoved a torch in through his ear.

Because now he had a new suspicion, and it was chewing away at him like only an unwanted realisation could. Now Laiel was starting to think that maybe Vornholt hadn't been captured on a rescue mission after all. He kept that right to himself and blended in with everyone else, but now that the thought was there it wasn't going away. Laial thought back to being choked by Vornholt, to being humbled as he felt all that power concentrated into such a young form.

As he pitted his experience against her genius and saw it wanting. He thought about it a lot.