Chương 129: Chapter 115 - Fear and Confusion

++Panic makes people do stupid things. Stupid people, combined with panic, can produce a true miracle of idiocy. ++ - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, 'The Great Lich'. 1, 891 A. E. Agrian hadn't wanted to believe Fiq's information, and had been ready to poke all sorts of holes in his evidence. Then he'd seen the evidence.

Seen the wide variety of places and areas the witnesses came from, how all of them gave the same information in ways that Fiq certainly lacked the resources to have coordinated, and reasoned out how well it all fit together. His immediate response was to just start dry-heaving. Agrian's body wanted to vomit out its disgust, but there wasn't enough in his belly for anything more than a trickle of acidic spit. His eyes watered anyway. It occurred to him, then, that Laiel Fiq was still standing beside him.

They were in an alley, isolated and with no witnesses. Had anyone seen them enter? Agrian didn't think so, which meant if there was any chance for the man to attack him, this was it. Magicians had to be paranoid around other magicians, because unless you went out of your way to walk around with a powerful shield enchantment, you were perpetually one lapse in focus away from being killed. It didn't matter if someone was half or even a tenth of your power, your body was still petty human meat.

Even children could kill adults with an unguarded hit. Agrian knew that much, he'd seen the bodies Isabel left in the estate after that second kidnapping attempt all those years ago. But Fiq didn't go for it. He didn't see his chance and lunge, just stood where he was and watched Agrian, patiently waiting for him to master his body once more. Was it some honourable streak finally rearing its head? Ha! Agrian got the impression he knew what was at play here. Fiq thought he'd convinced his way into a new ally.

Shit, maybe he has.

"I understand this is difficult for you," Fiq began, which only dragged the disgust out of Agrian to replace it with anger.

"Shut the fuck up," he spat.

"Don't pretend to understand anything, don't pretend to care." Fiq hesitated, still meeting his eye the whole time. Then he nodded.

"Alright, I won't. Your sister's a necromancer and very likely consorting with the rebels of Orapathaqi, her escaping their clutches as she did seems awfully coincidental if not. There's another thing." He told Agrian what he'd seen at the scene of Isabel's capture, which only worsened his day.

"I see." Agrian barely heard his own voice over the sound of blood pumping in his ears, and he turned away from Fiq without another word.

"Where are you going?" the magician asked him, moving after Agrian as he started walking, then jogging, then running flat out. It was a good question. Where was he going? Agrian was excited to find out himself. He tore down the streets of Orapathaqi like he was fleeing from a flood, and the wind in his ears obliterated everything Fiq called after him.

Agrian barely even remembered the man existed at this point, to say he'd gained bigger problems would be an understatement equivalent to calling his father somewhat stubborn. Gods, what Agrian wouldn't do to have father here now. And what he wouldn't do to keep him away. Things had changed between him and Isabel a few years ago, around the time Victoria started learning. Had Isabel… had his father… No, Baron Vornholt couldn't possibly have known as early as that, he'd have given the game away somehow.

He was about as subtle as a brick to the balls. And Agrian was spiralling, distracting himself with questions to keep from turning over the facts in his head. The facts were painful, singing his thoughts like hot metal pinched between fingers. It all came down to one, unpleasant fact. Agrian had to meet with Isabel and confront her.

He had to do that, because if he didn't hear her explanation for this from her own mouth then he'd never have a moment's peace, he'd always be guessing why she had or hadn't done the things she did. And she was his sister. Everything fell back on that in the end, she was his sister and she deserved to be heard out. But Agrian didn't find her. He asked around, barely having the presence of mind to pause enough for that, and was promptly, suspiciously, directed to her cell, where he found… absolute ruin.

The door was blown from its hinges, walls scorched and cracked, and men lay around in heaps. Godtouched, even. Agrian thought they were dead for a moment but… no, just groaning or unconscious. He stood there and wavered. Instinct told Agrian to run over and help them out, but what had father always said about instincts? They were the finest judgement a man could make. This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

But then, father beat the shit out of mother, so what did he know? Agrian listened to his brain instead, and his brain was telling him that he didn't want to leave any evidence or witnesses verifying he'd been here. Bad enough he'd fucking asked people for directions when Isabel had apparently blasted her way out, he was probably already a suspect between that and being her brother. Yes.

It didn't take much thought to conclude that being anywhere but here was the better choice, even if Agrian ignored the threats to himself and just focused on finding Isabel. It was clear enough she wasn't here, and he wouldn't be making it any easier to find her if he went and got himself hanged. Unfortunately, he'd already made a damning enough mistake by heading there in the first place. Agrian got the distinct impression of being followed about a minute after he scampered away.

Seconds later, he ran into a great wall of muscle that'd suddenly appeared before him. Damn near broke his nose, damn near broke his skull, before dropping back onto his arse and staring up at the Demigod Aryqatan who'd just dropped down in front of him.

"Why is it always either you or your sister causing problems for us?" she asked him. The Demigod sounded more tired than enraged, which Agrian was not stupid enough to consider a good sign. If she wasn't angry it was because she'd already resigned herself to action, and that action was unlikely to be in his best interests.

"Uh, I think you'd have to ask my sister about that, your Divinity," Agrian swallowed. She moved faster than he could see, clamping a hand down on his shoulder and yanking him up to his feet so fast that it felt like his arm might come free from the force of it.

"Get out of here, now," she hurriedly told him. Agrian did the dumb thing; pausing, staring and thinking.

"GO!" Her voice could probably have gotten louder, but Agrian still felt like his eardrums were close to bursting as it sent him running. His questions were weighing him down like solid mass sitting at the back of his brain and pressing down into it. But this time he didn't do the dumb thing, and knew better than to wait and try for an answer.

Aryqatan mused on Agrian Vornholt as he scrambled away from her, and she considered, very carefully, how many options she still had. Taking the boy before Nu'chista might well be tantamount to killing him. Taking his body would surely calm the child of Nglaru, maybe let her talk some sense into him. Ultimately, she just couldn't bring herself to do either. The city was looking to be on the verge of collapse already. Nu'chista's report had been scattered and unorganised, but Aryqatan had understood the gist of it.

She understood, too, that Vornholt was meant to have been held in the ruined cell she saw ahead. Apparently Garamon's youngest hero had turned traitor. Nu'chista would not be handling this well, not at all. Aryqatan took to a jog and headed for her fellow Demigod, cursing the tight confines of Orapathaqi that forced her to regulate her speed. She could have reached him in under a minute at full tilt, as things were she took over five.

His current base of operations was located high into the air at the top of a large, almost ornate tower that had probably belonged to the magician-class of this city in the past. Aryqatan took off from the ground with a short leap and brought herself up through its highest window in a single bound. Nu'chista was waiting inside, just as she'd expected. What surprised her was the presence of another face, Bagran Voret.

The boy had a mask of his usual, unbreakable confidence plastered over him, but to Aryqatan's practiced eye it looked suddenly thin and fragile. He was sweating, blonde hair turning brown with the moisture and plastered to his head, body trembling slightly as adrenal spasms racked it down to the muscle fibres. His eyes almost seemed to be watering. In that moment, Aryqatan was reminded just how young he was. How young everyone on that team had been.

She almost felt certain Nu'chista was young, too, by how he paced around and tantrummed, though she knew for a fact he'd been serving Nglaru for at least two centuries. The giant was practically shaking the floor as he strode around it, bumping into things and obliterating just about all of them on impact. He hardly seemed to see her.

"Where is Vornholt?" the Demigod demanded of the magician.

"Tell me now and you won't be punished for your…lapse." Bagran Voret could not have looked any paler if someone had fully emptied his blood.

"I don't know," he replied.

"I was tricked into helping her escape, and when she did she fled from me without telling me where to."

"LIES!" Nu'chista roared. Aryqatan was surprised the boy's eardrums didn't rupture, the sound left windows cracking in their panes.

"You may as well admit everything now," he continued.

"Your victims are all still alive, they'll be waking in a few minutes, hours at most, and then I'll know."

"Then they will tell you what I have," Voret continued.

"That I helped Vornholt escape after having been tricked about her innocence, but that I did not kill any men of Garamon or know where she went to." The boy winced, and Aryqatan felt for him. He might well avoid an execution, more thanks to his familial connections than anything else, but his career was dead in the water. People who acted against the Gods did not become Grandmasters of anywhere, let alone the Winzorth Institute. That must have been killing him, but he didn't let it show on his face.

Perhaps the little moron was finally starting to grow up.

"You're lying, once more, to a Demigod," Nu'chista hissed.

"Do you think your family will protect you from the consequences of this? Your family, your thin-blooded, petty, trifling little cabal of penny-pinching spell-slingers? Do you think they will keep you safe from the Children of Nglaru." The air shivered, as if hearing Nglaru's name pronounced by one of his sons was too much for it to bear. Oddly enough, Bagran Voret did not.

"What I think will happen next has no bearing on what I say, which is the truth," he replied with fire in his eyes.

"I don't know where Isabel has gone off to." Nu'chista was scared. He was enraged and hateful, but more than that he was scared. Aryqatan could see it in his face. That pulse of mana had been the first time he'd ever felt a power beyond his own outside of standing before the Gods themselves, and he wasn't used to dealing with it. So perhaps it wasn't such a surprise, or shouldn't have been at least, when he did what he did next.

Aryqatan saw it all like it was happening over long minutes, like every movement was slowed down a thousandfold for her comprehension, though in truth it was faster than she could react to. She barely had time for dread before Bagran Voret was already dead.