Chương 123: Chapter 109 - More Summons

++The cloud of suspicion is near-impossible to banish once it has begun to settle around you, when the Godtouched are concerned. Killing all parties involved rarely fails however. ++ - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, 'The Great Lich'. 1, 891 A. E. It was a day after my reunion with Agrian that I was finally able to free myself from his presence. The boy was not as bad as Victoria had been when last I saw her… but he was close.

Apparently grief, mixed with guilt, followed by the feeling of seeing me once more, had inspired some new clinginess to him. Focusing on it, I found the best comparison was that of a jungle vine growing up the length of a great tree. Smothering and grasping, caring not for how it inhibited the primary plant's growth, only wishing to tighten ever more around its trunk. Not an especially pleasant experience, and so I was glad to have extricated myself from it.

What made me less glad, though, was that this extrication involved another conversation with Eliza Huit regarding my role in the Orapathaqi garrison's special forces. Huit was in one way, at least, refreshing to talk to, because she did not seem to care in the slightest that I was alive. She had certainly been surprised when I made my way into her office, but only for a moment. Practical curiosity soon buried it.

"What do you want?" She asked. I sat down opposite her without asking for permission.

"I wish to be deployed back into the field," I said. It was true as well, I did wish to be deployed in the field.

"Why?" she asked.

"Because I… I failed everyone, by getting myself captured, by wasting all that time on search parties and… not being around to help. By not even gathering anything useful about the ritual that caused that surge of mana. I want to do better this time." That was pure fabrication of course, I wanted to be deployed into the field so that, when our group was inevitably dispatched to begin searching for Sethira through the crypts and locating her new ritual site, I could steer them all clear of it.

I did not know precisely where she was, but, having helped with the last ritual, I knew well enough where it would be easiest to carry out that I could delay efforts to find it. Provided I was allowed to join those efforts, which was looking… optimistic at the moment. Huit's eyes had taken on the sort of solidity I would expect to see in Baron Agrian Vornholt if he heard it suggested that Qaigor begin walking around in a frilly pink dress.

"This unit is made to achieve dangerous and difficult goals," she told me.

"Goals that require power but can't be managed by something as clumsy as a whole company. It's not set up to let noble children feel better after they fuck up." It was so odd to me, how many fellow women seemed to take a personal dislike to me so instantly after we met. I had heard others, usually men, laugh about womanly jealousy, but I did not think the reason was as simplistic as that. I would have to uncover it at some point. For now, I was left to merely tolerate and work around it.

"I am suggesting that you let me join because I can do things other trainees cannot," I said evenly.

"You have felt my power first-hand yourself. You know this is true." I was almost tempted to make another demonstration and show her the small amount it had already grown since we last spoke, though that would only attract suspicion. Her first question would be about how I had managed to continue practicing so regularly while imprisoned by the enemy, and things would degenerate from there.

"Power isn't everything," Huit told me.

"It isn't even half of everything. You think I've never seen a child genius before? I'm a Highmage of Garamon, you think I've not seen dozens? This is the army, not a talent show. If you can't follow orders you're useless."

"I can follow orders," I snapped.

"Start hopping on one leg and sing a song about what a pretty little princess you are," Huit told me.

"No," I replied.

"That is a stupid order."

"So you'll only follow orders you think are smart. What do I do, then, if a plan fails because there wasn't the time to give you information that would've made you realise how smart it was?" I could feel my face burning, and the bullets of sweat oozing up from my pores. Only part of these symptoms were caused by emotion.

"I will follow your orders in the field," I told her.

"But we are not in the field now."

"You weren't in the field before, either," she pointed out.

"When you ran off on your own and got captured like an idiot, when you coaxed your former team into playing distraction to help you." She almost got me. In my heightened state I nearly missed that she had just accused me of…well, of doing exactly what I had done, and had lied about along with Agrian. I just barely kept myself from blurting out a defensive answer that would have only confirmed her suspicions, feigning confusion instead.

"I gave my account of what happened," I told her.

"Are you calling me a liar?" I let anger seep into my voice, that was how the truly innocent tended to respond. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"No," Huit replied in an entirely unapologetic tone.

"Just wanted to see if you'd changed your story." I doubted that. This had warned me that I had not fooled everyone as well as I may have hoped, I was still under investigation. Perhaps that was the real reason I was facing so much reluctance to let me rejoin Huit's force.

"The Demigods are afraid," I said after a moment.

"Did you know that?" Huit stiffened, like people usually did when you pointed to cracks in the divine.

"They're cautious," she snapped.

"They are afraid," I repeated.

"They are afraid and for good reason. You did not get close to that surge of magic, but you must know as well as I do how far beyond the Demigods it was. Whatever spell is worked with that much power, it could reshape not only Orapathaqi, but the whole landscape for leagues around it." In fact, that ambient mana would be going to waste. It was nothing more than an accidental release from the Depths, a coincidental result of breaching a hole into that layer of reality and allowing what poured out to do so.

I did not see any reason to inform Huit, or anyone else, about this fact, however.

"What are you getting at?" the officer demanded.

"I am simply pointing out what the stakes are. We will not be saving ourselves if this ritual is completed properly, not with that scale of mana. We need to act now." Fear often pushed people to make hasty, poorly-thought-out decisions. I should have known better than to try this with Huit.

"You're desperate to join up," she said coolly.

"But I don't care about your desperation. I will have your obedience. Is that clear?" It sounded like she was on the brink of agreeing, though whatever reasoning she had used to reach this decision I could not guess. Perhaps she truly was just that desperate.

"It is clear," I nodded.

"You'll be paired with me," Huit added.

"And you'll obey orders unquestioningly. If I lose track of you once, you're off the team. I don't care if it's because you were captured again."

"That is fine," I assured her.

"I would sooner die than be captured again anyway." Huit snorted.

"Lots of young soldiers like to say that."

"How many have actually been captured?" I asked her. Her face fell.

"Not… Not many." Imprisonment was actually not that bad for Garamon's soldiers, depending on where it occurred. The supposedly savage people we tended to be dispatched to kill had a way of treating prisoners of war rather… well, not gently, but they did not dismember or eat us for sport as did the Godtouched of Garamon. They remained savages of course because dismembering and eating savages did not count. It was funny how everything the empire's people did was always justified, no matter what.

But for how much longer, I did not know. Our conversation was interrupted when a courier entered. I got to my feet and stepped aside, letting them pass towards Huit, and paused when a message was instead thrust at my own face.

"A summons for Isabel Vornholt," the courier said pompously.

"Your presence is requested for another debriefing." I was lucky. The mana surge had left Garamon's garrison disorganised and poorly coordinated, which meant they were not managing to keep me held and pressed rapidly when asking their questions. If they had, I would surely have been caught out by now on some detail I had not gotten the chance to learn in the meantime. Then again, it was not luck as much as good judgement. Sethira must have factored this in when she broke my leg. As cunning as ever.

I took the summons and read through it slowly, wanting to delay as much as I could. It was not, unfortunately, very long. Less fortunately still, I found that it was signed by the Demigod Aryqatan. Another chill went down my spine at that. During my first reign, I had not met many creatures more powerful than myself. A handful of Demigods, all of which I had avoided, and of course the Gods, who I did not face off with until the very end.

Rebirth had taken that natural supremacy from me and made encountering more powerful beings a semi-regular affair. I hated it. And yet, as usual, I could do nothing about it at this moment. At least now I could feel the seconds ticking by until I gained some divine power on my side. It would be days at least until Sethira's ritual continued reaching completion, and I was confident about sensing it when it reached the final stages.

If I played my cards right, I would not just be cooperating with a Godlike ancient lich who had been bound to help me by her own word. I would be that lich. Assuming I did not get vaporized this afternoon, which was, unfortunately, looking to be quite the assumption. I departed from the room and made my way towards the meeting place designated by Aryqatan, delayed only by a brief, annoying conversation with Agrian that left him storming off in a foul mood.

I did not actually know where the Demigod rested, but I knew that she had yet to claim a place as any sort of workspace or office. Her meetings tended to vary in location, and take place wherever she happened to feel like meeting. This one was no exception. She waited for me at the top of the city's outer wall, standing easily sixty yards above. There was a railed staircase spiralling up, with a ladder alongside it. Both options struck me as unacceptably tedious.

Instead I called on my mana and let it strike the ground beneath me, shooting myself up. I could never have moved horizontally in this way, there are simply too many potential obstacles, but with only clear sky above me I cut upwards faster than if I had dropped down the same distance, reaching the top in seconds. I overshot by a fair amount, too, and was forced to conjure aether flaps to slow my ascent before dropping down deftly to land before Aryqatan. The Demigod was not amused.

"Do you want to learn to fly?" she asked me. I was surprised by the question.

"I…would like to, if possible, your Divinity." She hummed, thoughtful.

"Then why haven't you married Bagran yet? He's clearly interested, and if you did so he would share his family's teachings with you. You could master them in months, if even that. You'd be flying better than any Voret in history in fact." I would, in fact, be flying better than any human in history. I knew this, because I had once managed to do so myself, even with a damaged Vessel. But that part of my life was of the past and the future.

"I think he would probably strangle me to death in a rage if he saw me out-perform his magic too much," I said honestly.

"Perhaps he would rape me first. There are better options for marriage that are less dangerous."

"You do plan to get married though?" the Demigod asked.

"Oh yes," I told her.

"I am actually here in Orapathaqi as part of that goal." She arched an eyebrow. I got the distinct impression she had another question, but the Demigod seemed to remember just then who she was talking to and move on before asking it.

"You answered the summons," she noted.

"Good." Her voice was cooler and less personable all of a sudden. That was just the way I liked it.

"You had questions for me, your Divinity?" I prompted.

"Ask away."