Chương 180: Book 3 Chapter 38: Another Wall Before the Enemy

++Conflict has truly begun now. On my side is ancient wisdom and intelligence, on my enemy's is the power of a star. I fancy that my advantage is the greater one. ++ - Fragment of Lord Dread's archives, date indeterminate. When I was not developing weapons, I was busy experimenting with Nu'chista. I was nearing the edge of what I could learn from him, which was to say that I was finally starting to complete the project I had been using him for.

That did not mean his usefulness was at its end though, just that I was getting ready to finally 'expend' him as a resource. It was not my choice, circumstances were forcing my hand. Days passed, and more good news came to the refinery. Shipments of machine-guns. Apparently my father had gotten word of what was happening. I had feared this, feared him arriving to demand that I leave, mustering his influence over the refinery to keep me from fully exerting mine, and yet instead… machine-guns.

They were identical copies of the one he had used to defend our home all those years ago, save that each seemed slightly smaller and more streamlined. Final versions of the experimental prototype he had gotten his hands on early. Blakely had them tested and drilled on, then promptly positioned them around the wall in those spaces most likely to be swarmed when the enemy tried to scale it. He seemed rather enthusiastic about the weaponry.

"Good noise-makers," he grunted. It was as close to giggling and dancing as the Cadnichan ever got, and I had heard him replicate the expression only when he finally received his heat-ray. But I had other things to concern myself with, too. Qaigor had taken to running laps in the courtyard, swinging some ridiculously heavy training-weapon, lifting rocks, striking the stony surfaces with his fists until cracks ran through them and the whole things split. He looked precisely like he was preparing for war.

Though I did not especially care whether he lived or died for its own sake, I knew it would be inconvenient to me if he perished under my guardianship. I made myself take him aside for a conversation about his training later that day.

"What are you doing?" I asked him as he repeatedly threw blows down into a boulder. Qaigor really was gaining strength with remarkable speed, only a few months had passed since he accompanied me here and yet I could already see a difference in his physical prowess. He turned to look at me over his shoulder with a grin as wide as his stance.

"Training," he panted.

"I'm getting strong. Magicians are dangerous, everyone knows it. There's magicians coming to kill you right? To destroy your refinery. I'm going to kill them." When Agrian had first seen men die, he had been near-catatonic. He had been younger than Qaigor, but the effect was still notable nonetheless. When Agrian had first killed men, a dark mood had taken him for weeks after. But Qaigor merely grinned, not seeming to have a care in the world.

I had seen him end a life with his very hands right before me, and since he did so he had not once spoken of it. There was no reluctance, no shame, he simply did not find the event noteworthy enough to mention it in conversation. A footnote in his constantly growing strength. How I wished he could have become a magician instead of a warrior.

"That is what I wanted to talk to you about," I said.

"You need to go back to Garamon."

"What?!" Qaigor roared.

"No, fuck you!"

"I need-–""This is unfair," he interrupted.

"I need—""You're allowed to stay and you're a damned woman, I want to fight!" He continued.

"Silence!" I snapped. Qaigor halted his tirade, barely. I spoke in a measured tone.

"One day you will be the strongest warrior in the world, and probably in history. That is not an opinion, it is a fact. But only if you live. Do you want to sacrifice that future to die in a desert?" Qaigor glared at me.

"Mother was right," he said.

"You are stupid." I was actually left speechless for a moment by sheer surprise. Qaigor ranted on while my silence continued.

"I don't want to die here, I don't even really want to fight here. But I'm going to protect my sister. That's what Agrian always does. You can't stop me from doing that." I looked into my brother's face and saw the unflinching certainty written across it, the hard eyes and the flared nostrils and the tight jaw. Despite it all, he still failed to look anything at all like our father. But I found myself thinking of Agrian without even meaning to. Did you know this text is from a different site?

Read the official version to support the creator. Looking at the boy, I considered my cards. Isabel the doting older sister, insistent on getting him out of harm's way. Isabel the Baronness, ordering her brother removed without paying heed to his own wishes. Isabel the magician, declaring him to be in violation of her plans and extricating him herself. And then Isabel the soft-hearted, Isabel the woman with the crack in her guard.

This was the card I chose, because it gave me a perfect excuse to bolster the refinery's chances of survival even more.

"Meet me here in eight hours," I told my brother as I headed off for the leyline. As Isabel Vornholt, the enchantment work I intended to do next would have taken me years. As Lord Dread, those years became less than an hour each. I worked on a full set of armour for Qaigor, made from surplus metals taken from the leftovers from my cannons, and layered it with magic as deep and as strong as I could make it. Then a blade, then a shield. If I did this for all my men, it would demand questions.

People would wonder how I found the power or time to do so much enchanting. For Qaigor, though? My younger brother? Nobody would question that he had been given preferential treatment and equipped in such a way. He was the perfect vehicle to let me make use of such deadly weapons as part of this defence. Qaigor was waiting just where I had told him to when I emerged to present him with the arms and armour. His eyes practically lit up at the sight of it all.

"This is for me?!" he asked, grinning.

"Yes," I told him. He reached for it all and I held the piled equipment just beyond his hands.

"These are not toys."

"I know," he snapped.

"Father already taught me swordsmanship, though I've never fought in armour."

"It takes time to get used to," I noted. Enchanted armour did exist in the modern age, structural reinforcements to steel could leave it proof against even modern firearms, but like all enchanted equipment it was rare and expensive.

"I've never seen a style like this," Qaigor grinned as he ran his hand over the hundreds of overlapping plates.

"It is called lamellar armour," I explained.

"Popular in various parts of the east centuries ago." I had selected it for ease of construction. A full set of platemail would take longer to fit, measure and design than to enchant. Longer by far. My time was not unlimited.

"And it's all magic?" my brother asked.

"All magic," I confirmed.

"The armour has a mass of effectively zero, and will work to regulate your temperature and mitigate any wounds and exhaustion you feel, as well as having a minor force-multiplying effect for your movements. The steel is made hundreds of times stronger than normal, and insulated against heat, electricity, acidic corrosion and any number of other effects." He cackled.

"And the sword?"

"The sword's edge is literally one molecule thick, and will resist chipping as well as naturally repair itself in-between swings." I could see his eyes glaze over. I sighed, picking the weapon up.

"Watch," I instructed, then dropped it. Gravity alone carried it down tip-first into the ground, and the weapon sank halfway to the hilt before finally stopping.

"That's so cool!" Qaigor laughed, snatching it up.

"It cannot really be sheathed," I warned him.

"So you must be careful with—" he swung the sword through the air like a maniac, laughing as he did. I sighed and walked away, deciding that this would become my problem when he actually decapitated someone important and not before.

"Wait," Qaigor called as I moved away. I paused, turning back to see him serious again.

"Thank you," my brother said.

"I know that you're worried about me, I know you don't want me to get hurt, but I feel the same way about you. I'm going to fight as hard as I can to protect you Isabel, I promise." Qaigor was an asset, and like all young warriors and magicians he was an asset that would become exponentially more useful as he grew older and more powerful. But he was, ultimately, replaceable. And I could more easily replace a warrior of his strength than I could my refinery, if I ended up in debt from its destruction now.

My brother was already swinging his sword as I stood up to leave. Watching him from the corner of my eye, I found that his form was a dead ringer for that of our father. That much made sense at least. It was Baron Vornholt who had taught Qaigor to fight. He would have done the same with Agrian, had the wealth of magicians not so exceeded that of warriors.

Still, Qaigor seemed to have learned well in his training and melted from one stance to another, flicking the blade through the air like the three-pound chunk of steel was light as a feather. It was a single-edged sabre, the same style of blade favoured by our father. I was more accustomed to making double-bladed tools of war, ones popular in the ancient world, but I had guessed that this configuration would be more familiar to the boy. By how well he handled it, I could see I was right.

From there I moved on and touched up a hundred other little things around the refinery. I added my own mines to key points past the wall, marking them with natural-seeming patches of gravel so my idiot employees did not accidentally vaporize themselves. I made one tweak after another to the golems, I helped demolish yet more of the obstructions to our fields of fire, I did all I could think of. My body tired before my mind did, and I slept reluctantly only to wake up and start all over again.

Each night of rest was briefer and less restorative than the one before it. Liches are not supposed to feel the prick of nerves, but this mortal body brought with it mortal foibles. I could ignore them, bury my fear and growing apprehension, but on a purely physiological level, it was gnawing at me. And so I worked. And so Sethira worked. And so Paula, who no longer met my eye or spoke to me outside of orders given and taken, worked. And so every man and woman under my employ worked.

The skies were starting to taste of blood not yet spilled, and the mercenaries were growing nervous. They hid it well, men whose livelihoods were built on seeming fearless and able to withstand any danger. Of course, if they knew what was truly coming for them, they would all resign their contracts at once. I took solace in picturing their amusing panic when the assault finally came, and they had their backs to the wall. Blakely would be working hard to ensure no treachery came from them when that started.

I slept again, my mind fading into unconsciousness as my drained vessel took its chance to replenish. I did not even need to actively train anymore, just the daily exertions of my mana were keeping my power growing at a steady rate.