Chương 24: Chapter 23: Unconventional Scholarship

++My disguise could certainly have been better in my early days, and I count this among my many mistakes. The way I handled Agrian was yet another. I fancy the latter to be worse by far. ++ - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, 'The Great Lich'. 1, 891 A. E There was no punishment awaiting me immediately after I corrected Agrian's bullies, and I had them to thank for it. They had chosen their ambush site well. Agrian himself, however, was still unhappy with me.

"You didn't need to do that!" he snapped as I headed away from the space between the two buildings. I had been meaning to march off double-time and leave him behind. Unfortunately, his legs were longer than mine. I was close to heaving and he still caught up without even seeming to bother rushing at all. I missed my old body sometimes.

"I did," I told him.

"No," Agrian grabbed me hard by the arm and turned me around. I was suddenly reminded, then, of his strength and size. He had been a mere child around me for so long that I had failed to really understand, or even notice, how big the physical gulf was. Not since he had kicked me in the past, as a toddler. He had stopped doing that long ago. But only of his own volition, I could not have physically made him.

"Let me go," I told him. My voice was sharper than I intended, a touch of genuine emotion. Agrian's grip tightened, rather than relaxing. I felt fear for the first time in a long time.

"Let. Me. Go." Something in my voice must have pricked at his instincts, or else he may have simply remembered that it was his little sister he was manhandling. Agrian released me.

"I asked you not to get involved," he growled. There was a note of pleading in his voice, now. A note of hurt.

"Do you know what's going to happen now, Isabel?"

"Yes, those idiots will remember that they cannot cross my brother and get away with it."

"They'll laugh at me!" he snapped, tears in his eyes.

"They'll spread the word around, and by tomorrow I'll be known across the whole school as a coward who needs his little sister to defend him!"

"Then defend yourself next time," I told him coolly. Agrian paused, looking for a moment like he had just been electrocuted.

"Do you not even care?" he croaked.

"No," I snapped.

"I do not care. I care that you were humiliating me by letting yourself be pushed around like a whipped dog. It was pathetic and disgusting and I expect better from someone who dares to call himself my brother. If you cannot do the bare minimum of protecting our family name yourself, then you will kindly remain silent while I pick up your slack." I had never seen him so hurt before that moment. His face seemed to almost collapse in on itself, tears now falling openly and rolling down his cheeks.

I watched my brother turn and flee with no small amount of relief. Rage stabbed at me, however, hot and angular where it worked its way deep into my guts. I was not sure what the source was, and not knowing only made me angrier still. I made my way to my room in the hopes of calming down. For the next few days, I did not see much of Agrian. He normally seated himself next to me in our classes, all of which we shared, but after that the boy seemed deliberately distant. Good.

I had grown up alone and died alone, then been sealed alone. Solitude would teach him a lot. I could also see that he was getting far more stares than he had previously, and almost all of them were mocking. But I saw, too, that he was not being harassed as he had been. Many of the students who looked his way would send flickering glances in my direction, and almost all of them shied away from my own eyes before I could stare back.

As I had expected it would, the fear of me had spread just as thoroughly as the mockery of Agrian. More so, perhaps. I did not expect my brother to be grateful, and I did not need him to. I had accomplished my goal. This period of bliss did not last long, however. Shortly after the incident, I was called into an office and found my brother waiting in it for me. The room was large, larger even than my own bedroom.

It seemed to have been a repurposed ballroom, or at least it was as large as one, and the only reason I did not hear my footsteps echoing out across the walls was likely due to the great amount of ornamentation decorating them. Trophies or artwork, sculptures and an endless variety of other pieces were waiting for my gaze wherever it turned. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"What is this place?" I asked my brother, as I turned around and kept examining it. Agrian ignored me, and so I ignored him. I was not going to lose a battle of wills to a thirteen year-old.

"Answer me!" I snapped, as I turned again and found only more questions. There were plaques on the wall and numerous snippets of paper or parchment, all relating to the Winzorth Institute, as far as I could tell.

"The Grandmaster's office," Agrian said at last.

"Don't know why he called us both here though." He sounded reluctant to answer, and seemed to be doing his best to sneer every word.

"Then you are both fools, I fear," came an adult's voice from behind. I spun around to see an elderly man strolling in.

"Who are you?" I snapped as I studied him.

"I am the Grandmaster, Isabel. And we must talk." He was tall, but walked with a hunch, and had deep ebony skin of the sort I would have expected from my own, original place of birth. His hair, however, was stark white, and he wore a pair of rounded spectacles that were just as delicate as the rest of him.

"About what?" I asked, as he moved sluggishly into the office and began making his way up a spiral staircase leading to some second floor.

"I think you know," he called back. Then with a flex of magic, he levitated himself up over the steps. It was only then that I saw his mana, surging forth all at once, clearly hidden by spellwork until that exact moment. Age is strength to a magician. There is no hard ceiling on how much our magic can grow over time, and provided we never stop training to expand it, it will expand forever. This was what made me such a threat to the Gods—liches do not age and their bodies never die.

After thousands of years, my own reserves, already made powerful by talent, were beyond anything human. This man, obviously, was not quite as powerful as that, but he still shocked me with the extent of his magic. At a glance, I might have mistaken him for a weaker Demigod for raw strength.

"Interesting," I heard the man mutter. My eyes focused back on the physical, instead of the magical, and I found him staring at me with an odd look upon his face.

"Agrian, please stay where you are. I must speak with your sister first." My brother had been halfway to his feet until hearing that, then froze and scowled.

"You're talking to us in order of talent are you?" he spat, with an unexpected venom in his voice. The Grand Master simply smiled.

"No, my boy, not at all. But believe me, it is best for everyone if you are not privy to this conversation." He had a way of saying things that I myself could not mimic, I had to admit. The Grand Master's tone seemed to promise that everything he said was for our own best interests, while simultaneously making it into a command. I actually found myself looking for any signs of illusion magic that might be manipulating my emotions, but even mana sight revealed nothing.

It may simply have been charisma, or the Grand Master may have been even better at hiding his magic than I had seen already. That second idea was a frightening one. Unable to see the power of others? I would be no different from anyone else. Eerie. I followed the Grandmaster up his staircase, trying and failing to hide how casually tiring I found the twenty three steps and entering the upper section of his office. It was far smaller, though much more to my liking.

Everything here seemed to have a purpose, with the bulk of it being taken up by a single workstation that seemed almost compressed with writing supplies and books. Once, I had maintained a very similar room in my own fortress. Though my books had been bound in the skin of Godtouched—I felt I had things to prove at the time.

"I've been meaning to talk to you for quite some time, Isabel," the Grandmaster said as I finally approached his desk. He was leaning back behind it and sighing.

"Oh, forgive me, these old bones, you know? They tire easily." I nodded, and did not point out that I had just watched him levitate over the space I myself had walked. By the look in his eye, I suspected he knew I wanted to.

"Am I in trouble?" I asked him, deciding that I would be well served by playing the hapless girl in his presence. Whatever answers I might get with more direct questions were not worth his focus, I somehow knew. He smiled.

"Yes my dear, I suspect very much that you are." That was disturbing and ominous. I quite enjoyed seeing ancient magicians say disturbing and ominous things, however I enjoyed it only when I was the ancient magician doing it. Being on the receiving end, I suddenly found myself realising why so many people had a tendency to squirm in negotiations with me prior to my rebirth.

"Because of what happened with Agrian?" I added, then made a show of looking startled and regretful, as if I had just let slip something crucially important. As if my greatest fear were being disciplined like any other child.

"What did happen with Agrian?" he asked me with a smirk. I got the distinct impression I was being trapped, that answering would be giving him what he wanted. I answered anyway, because I had no choice. It was what a frightened little girl would do.

"Agrian was being bullied," I told him.

"He asked them to stop and they would not, it made me angry, so angry! I…I decided to punish them, to make them stop myself. And it worked!" I was getting better at aping the tones of a child, if not the speech patterns. I still could not bring myself to use contractions. I did not know why.

"Interesting way to describe that. And how did you feel?" The Grandmaster was amused, drawing this out for reasons I could not identify. I continued playing along for my lack of options.

"It was the right thing to do. They deserved it!" I stomped my foot as I finished the sentence, maybe a shade excessive, but then children tend to have excessive body language. It was a shame, how good my performance was. On anyone else it would have sent suspicion hurtling away from me at record speed. But this game was already won before I had entered the office.

"I'm going to stop toeing around this now, for both of our sakes," he smiled. The expression did not touch his eyes.

"I am in need of allies. I have, as I said earlier, been watching you, Isabel. And I have read a lot. Your talent is unprecedented—almost inhuman. Your knowledge and mannerisms are not what I would expect for your age, and, I am quite sure, you even have the power to see the stuff of magic itself." He paused, then licked his lips, seeming, for the first time, uncertain.

"... I suppose what I am saying is…Good afternoon, Lord Dread, it is an honour to meet you."