Chương 117: Chapter 103 - Ram, Mill and Cage

++Long-form magical rituals are a force multiplier for any spellcaster. Imagine what they can do for two. ++ - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, 'The Great Lich'. 1, 891 A. E.

"I don't know who this Bagran is," Sethira told me.

"But he sounds annoying." I thought about how to explain it.

"My theory is that some time ago, a disposal unit filled with dead rats and waste genetic material was caught in some arcane storm that forcibly and disastrously imbued it with some semblance of life. From the sludge-pit of this crawled a repulsive, sexual abomination by the name of Bagran. It has been my problem ever since." Sethira giggled. It was a remarkably girlish sound, and one that left me with no small degree of horror. Was that how I sounded when I laughed? Despicable.

"Well, as much as I'll enjoy putting him out of your misery, I'm afraid the time to kill isn't upon us just yet," she told me.

"The timing for our sacrifice is very particular with this ritual, and the ritual itself will take some time to set up." I thought about suggesting that we kidnap him pre-emptively, but let that idea wither. It was utterly ridiculous and stupid, and something I was even considering only for purely self-serving and recreational purposes. A second prodigious disappearance among the army would bring on a wave of panic and retaliation the likes of which this little rebellion could not possibly survive.

In fact, it was only for the presence of the crypts that I even believed I would go as long as a month without being snatched back up in some barbaric rescue. A month if we were lucky, that was. Not very long at all.

"Let us begin working then," I said.

"We do not have the time to waste." Sethira smiled. Our cooperation did not begin very well. If, by some ridiculous coincidence, you have ever read a surviving account of other liches attempting to work together, you will understand why. It takes will to perform magic, and more will to perform the magics that render someone immortal. This is very useful for forcing the laws of nature to bend through sheer strength of mind, but it tends to inhibit one's ability to get along with others.

There were, especially early on, inconvenient clashes of ideals.

"You stupid worm," I snapped as Sethira crowded my work station.

"You demonically possessed rat excretion!" she roared as I did absolutely nothing wrong. The two of us spent hours at each other's throats over those early days. Fortunately, hours were not so great a span of time compared to the dozens more we were putting into our project. And liches can multitask like… well, like a creature whose mind is actually capable of multitasking. Humans do not understand how big of a difference that makes.

Progress was reasonably quick and terribly consistent, and it was growing faster as we went. Early on I was forced to play the humiliating role of apprentice, knowing far less about this particular field than Sethira herself and unable to fill anything more than a supporting role. Sethira noticed this, naturally. I was still an ancient lich and knew enough generalised facts about necromancy that I was invaluable as a contributor, but she was guiding the route of our work and both of us knew it.

Sethira did actually work to educate me as we went. And this was where the real dance went. And where I found my greatest advantage. As was lich custom, she safeguarded her knowledge carefully. Expedience was forcing her to share much of it with me, perhaps as much as she would ever teach any subordinate, but she was deliberately holding back on the secrets that would allow me to match or surpass her.

She would explain the theory of the Depths in one particular field, and show me how to best make practical use of this theoretical knowledge, but always there were holes in what she said that kept a complete understanding from being managed on my part. It was ingeniously done. She seemed to have gauged exactly what she could hold back on without leaving my understanding truly incomplete, and without leaving the risk that I would piece together the blanks myself and work out what she was missing.

Unfortunately for her, she had failed to verify the single, most crucial step. She had assumed that this little battle of wits, like our last few, was a fair one. It was not. And as she showed me her incomplete explanations, I was scrutinising everything with eyes that could perceive raw magic. Sethira had never truly had a chance of keeping much from me. On the other hand, as helpless as she was to keep me from learning more, I still opted to feign ignorance and frustration.

The longer she remained unaware of my advantage, the more I would glean from it. Already I was acquiring secret lore my teacher did not want me to have, growing twice as fast as I was pretending to. Eventually, I intended to surpass her, but until that happened there would always be a huge benefit to letting her think she could control what I knew. Even once I did surpass her, in fact, there were advantages to visible mana that would be diminished if she knew I had them.

In this, the Gods' efforts at rewriting history benefitted me once again. With long study and familiarity Sethira could certainly have deduced my identity, but the history books all over the world were made deliberately inaccurate about me. Unfortunately for her, she had not made a deliberate study of my rise in her previous life. She simply did not have the hidden information needed to identify me. And so we continued to work.

The ritual itself was still not fully told to me, probably caution on Sethira's part to make sure I did not simply flee to try and perform it myself, but we were making steady progress on the physical preparations. Her supplies of raw materials surprised and impressed even me. I recognised the magically-attuned mundane materials right away, she had vast stores of silver, gold and platinum, as well as various gemstones. Solidified mana extracted from the depths of leylines was also a common feature.

There were also the body parts she had compiled from magical creatures, including what I was actually quite sure was the actual shrunken head of a rather potent human magician. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. Only one material left me with questions.

"What is this?" I asked, gesturing at a greenish metal. I feigned curiosity and uncertainty, for I did not feel anything from it despite seeing a dense rush of mana going through it. A Demigod's skin was more magical than this substance, but not by much.

"Orichalcum," she explained.

"Have you heard of the Deep City?" I winced, like she had reminded me of some embarrassing event of my past.

"In passing. I do not think I was active when they were, however. I was…predisposed at the time." She accepted that with a nod.

"They were the most powerful non-liches I have ever seen evidence of existing. A society of magicians who sought to cooperate and pool their knowledge rather than walk the path of independence." I nodded at that, thoughtfully.

"Hm. Spineless, pitiable weaklings."

"Of course," Sethira agreed.

"But…what was that new saying the modern youth have? Something about monkeys and typewriters." She was disturbingly organic, this lich. Sethira was almost as old as me in the grand scheme of things. She did not simply forget sayings. Still, she pretended to, seemingly on reflex.

"You were explaining the origins of this orichalcum material," I reminded her.

"Yes. It was one of the more impressive inventions of the Deep City's magicians. Made through a combination of magics that I know only half of, it involves mixing crystallized Demigod blood with various deep-crust minerals and folding the final product under truly remarkable pressure. The result is the most magically-inert material I have ever encountered."

"Magically inert?" I frowned.

"Magically inert," she repeated.

"We'll need it. Parts of this ritual are going to produce arcane energies the likes of which you may never have seen before. This will be the only thing that can shape and bind them without boiling into… I believe the modern phrase for it is 'stellar plasma'." I had read about that myself, too. Garamon's early explorations of our sun had been disastrous.

Amusingly, it took several dozen Highmages before making an attempt to fly into the thing and take samples was properly outlawed, regardless of what sort of innovative protection was used and how certain its creator was that it would do better than the previous generations'. Eventually, though, magic allowed for it to be studied from afar in ways that left the magicians of the various Institutes far more certain of far more facts than any of the mundane scientists competing with them.

It was thanks to these early efforts that most modern knowledge about the nature of stars had been gathered. Namely, that they were absurdly hot. I doubted a Demigod would survive long, bathing in one. Turning matter into the very same substance implied a formidable amount of mana indeed. Sethira was wrong to assume I had never encountered more, but she was not to be blamed for her misconception. She had no way of knowing, after all, that I had ever personally fought a God.

"Are you sure you have enough?" I asked her frankly.

"I do not want to be vaporized either."

"I have enough." We continued our work. Days passed and I learned more with each one. The Depths were not something I had ever engaged with fully. For me, they were new ground. I had known there was something beyond the physical world, I had even done dealings with beings and travellers from other planes, but to interact directly with the realm between was broadening my horizons and further completing my knowledge. This did not mean that Sethira simply knew more than me, however.

In fact I could not help but notice that much of her own knowledge was clearly built upon the groundwork I had trailblazed during my original life. When it came to the Depths, she was the master for now. But the direct manipulation of necromantic energies and the creatures that were reanimated by it was something I still exceeded her in. More than once, she reluctantly asked me for an explanation on how I did one thing or another, and I took the chance to 'bargain' by exchanging the knowledge for some of hers.

Sometimes things I did not actually know, but more often just confirming the facts I had seen myself with my mana-vision. I had already decided that hiding that was more important than gaining even more knowledge from her, I already had the advantage in that regard. Our ritual preparation was as much material as theoretical, however, and for every equation carefully balanced to ensure the magical energies were properly handled, we had more of our time spent on basic, brute construction.

This was where our assistants came into play. None of them had the fine mana control required to contribute with the ritual itself, but measuring and warping matter to proper specifications was something any skilled magician could manage. It took shape quickly. Great struts of metal raised up from the floor and curled inwards like grasping fingers from a palm, all closing in on the same point between them without quite touching it.

These pylons would be the main focusing mechanism, and leaving them bare was a great risk, so we had them bound with both physical defences, thick slabs of dense metal that melted at a higher temperature than iron boiled, and magical runework made to catch and channel the energies at play. Other precautions were taken, and others beyond that. We covered every inch of the chamber in layer upon layer of protection, both of us working diligently and sparing no exertion.

Sethira and I both knew we had to be scrutinous like never before. And our long work brought with it more time to speak.

"It is obviously not a coincidence that we both re-emerged at the same time," I noted.

"Do you have a theory about this?"

"Firstly, tell me the date of your own birth," Sethira replied.

"I want to know just how close the coincidence is." We shared details and concluded that she was, in this new life, older than me by a few months.

"I don't know then," she shrugged.

"But it does demand investigation, later on." I suspected she did know. She would have been far more curious about it if she had not, asking me for information for one thing. But the fact that she was choosing to deny this at all meant that I would not learn more without making things more complicated between us. I had bigger problems, so I allowed this one to sit for now. We got back to work. With two ancient liches aiming our minds on the same problem, progress came quickly and effortlessly.

It helped that Sethira was probably the most sociable one of our kind I could remember meeting, she rarely snapped and threatened to vaporize her partner only once or twice to my five times. Things were going easily and well, and the days trickled by. Then, seemingly all of a sudden, our first breakthrough came. The focusing mechanisms aligned and I felt a pressure as even the chamber's meagre amounts of ambient mana were suddenly compressed at the centre of the device, threatening to burn into something more.

I stepped back instinctively and shielded myself, watching as the magical energies swirled until they heated the air up enough to produce visible heat. I turned and saw Sethira watching, too. Her expression could best have been described as 'vainglorious'. My own was probably similar.

"That's step one complete," she grinned.

"Just a short while longer, and we'll have our cage set up." Our cage, the first component. Our ram, the second. Or millstone, the third. The ram to break through into the Depths, the cage to bind Zameka's substance, the millstone to grind it down into a form of magic more digestible to the human vessel. And after that, the world's undead would have a God on their side. I just needed to find a way to make sure that I was the one to obtain that power.