Chương 29: Chapter 28: A Difference of Priorities

++There were things about other people that I struggled to understand at first, experiences I lacked that would have given me much insight into others. I came to understand this more as I grew into my second life. ++ - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, 'The Great Lich'. 1, 891 A. E A wave of upset ran through the mana surrounding me, just as it was closing in. For a moment I saw the real world, the solid world, superimposed over the void my senses were trapped in. Sascithius said nothing.

"Trouble on your other end?" I asked him.

"No."

"You could never lie to me, could you? Too stupid I fear, you always were one of my most idiotic apprentices."

"Silence!""' Hmm, today I think I shall combine both vampirism and lichdom into a single super-ritual' what was I thinking, taking on a fool like you? At the very least you taught me that magical potential is not the only thing that matters." Agitating him was purely to my advantage, the way I saw things. The angrier he was with me, the less clear his thoughts would grow, the more mistakes he would make, the slower he would react, and the worse he would react to more surprises.

I had no idea what had happened to cause that blip in his confinement magic, but I knew that it was good for me. All I needed to do was capitalize. And hope that my former apprentice was as badly weakened as I thought.

The dungeon reeked of blood, so much that Agrian thought he might suffocate on it. Everywhere he turned that pungent, gory stench awaited him, making his eyes water, his throat tighten almost to choking. The Novice was gasping and spluttering beside him, and he found himself agreeing with the sentiment. But Agrian barely had a moment to think about that. In the centre of the room he saw bodies, half a dozen all strewn out beside one another, with his sister among them. Breathing, he saw. And in peril.

"Isabel!" he screamed, surging in and catching the sight of building, crimson mist just in time to stop himself before he barrelled into it. Agrian slipped on the suddenly-wet floor and went down, getting smeared with substances he didn't want to think about before scrambling back up to his feet. The mists started moving towards him, and he backed away on instinct, cowardice winning out over the urge to protect his family. But as he drew nearer to the door, the mists faltered and started falling back.

Scared of going outside, are you? He couldn't understand why that might be, didn't know a damned thing about whatever this entity was, but he wasn't about to dismiss an advantage like that. Agrian hurled a magic missile into the mists and… watched it pass through harmlessly, doing nothing. Right then, experimentation time. He cycled through every nature and spell matrix he knew, trying fire, cold, electricity, pure force again, even risking illusion at the cost of coming dangerously close to those tendrils.

Nothing worked.

"We should leave," the Novice squeaked behind him.

"We can't fight this thing!"

"If you can figure out how, then by all means run away, but I think we have better odds of killing this thing than we do of escaping it once it decides to climb out of the dungeon." Self-preservation seemed like the best way to influence his new ally.

The magic holding me now was definitely losing its form, I would have noticed that even if I could not see the mana directly.

"You seem to have lost almost as much power as I have," I observed.

"A consequence of vampirism if I am not mistaken, long slumbers leave your kind temporarily diminished afterwards—quite a steep price to pay for something as simple as a physical advantage, do you not think?"

"Shut up!" Sascithius had always been quick to anger and slow to calm, and apparently the millennia had not smoothed out that flaw of his. I would have been surprised if they had, time rarely changed people in practice.

"You could release me, you know, before I escape and find a way to kill you. I will give my word to part ways peacefully now if you spare me the trouble, you know that my word has always been my bond."

"No, your knowledge has been your bond, and you used it to ensnare me just like you did so many others you sadistic bastard!"

"Yes, and? That was millennia ago, are you still whining about that?" Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

The tendrils were starting to writhe around before Agrian's eyes, like they were in pain somehow. He wasn't complaining, it gave him more chance to experiment. What he was complaining about was how that experimentation would need to happen. They weren't approaching him by the door at all, no matter what. That was a clue, but it also meant that he couldn't do this safely. Your little sister's unconscious in there and you're whining about your own safety? How pathetic can you get?

Agrian made himself storm down the steps and deeper into the dungeon, felt his heart pounding and his legs threatening to collapse out from under him. Gods, why couldn't father be here, what would father do? Probably accuse the bloody tendrils of having small dicks, then try to headbutt them. Maybe it was a good thing Agrian the Younger was handling this instead of the Elder. As soon as he was down lower into the dungeon, tendrils came for him.

He threw out a wall of aether and stumbled back, keenly aware that he might well be caught and suffer whatever fate those others had if this didn't work. But luck was on his side, and the crimson mists bounced from Agrian's barrier like they were winds breaking against a glass pane. They chased him up the stairs like hounds on the hunt, and he ran like the most cowardly rabbit to ever grace the halls of Winzorth.

He could've thrown himself through the door and fully into safety, but instead Agrian leapt and turned in the air, hurling out more aether as the mists drew closer, hastily forming a box, then cutting it off to leave some of the crimson substance fully separated from the rest and trapped inside. It was the fastest magic he thought he'd ever done, and its effect on whatever was controlling this attack came instantaneously and earthshakingly.

The tendrils coiled like wounded snakes, writhing around half-mad and aimless. Agrian stumbled farther back with his stolen prize and practically fell through the doorframe out into the hall, then, wincing even as he did it, released the aether and let the red mist disperse outside of the dungeon. It vanished in mere moments, like blood dripped into water and left to dilute.

This latest shaking of the void was the most prominent yet.

"You were just hurt, were you not?" I observed, feeling out around me with tendrils of bound power. I could not actually feel my mana here, surrounded as I was by such a powerful mass of someone else's, but my sight was as perfect as ever, and I began working power into a chisel to drive against the insides of Sascithius' prison.

"None of your business," the vampire-lich growled.

"It is, actually. This weakness is how I intend to kill you."

"You're still convinced you'll come out on top?"

"Of course, I am Lord Dread."

"Not right now, now you're a little girl." I paused, then shot an angry look up at the void around me.

"I am going to make your death twenty seconds longer, for that remark."

Agrian was straining all his will to keep the aether in one piece, and even then he could barely manage it. Beside him the Novice was doing much the same. Between the two of them, and with the crimson tendrils too hesitant to attack with the open door at their backs, they were just about managing to make progress. Trapping one section of the mist, cutting it off with layered aether, then hauling it back to disintegrate into nothing as they exposed it to space outside the dungeon.

It was tiresome and tedious, draining their mana as they continued at it, but they were making progress. The only question was; could the entity they fought outlast them? It didn't seem to be getting smaller, to Agrian's eye. No matter how much of the crimson mist they were hauling away, there seemed to be just as much awaiting them in the dungeon. He could feel his mana supply dwindling already from the heavy exertions on it, and his body was hardly doing much better.

There weren't exactly a lot of stairs in the dungeon, but by now he'd made enough trips to have probably run up and down a hundred steps at least. Dozens of loads of this mist, he'd dumped away, and still it writhed on. Did it look hurt? More sluggish? Agrian couldn't tell, he had no way of knowing how much wishful thinking would lie to him here. All he knew was that this was the single thing he'd started doing that this entity didn't like, and that it had his little sister.

He'd be damned if he did anything less than all he could to make its life hell. The Novice was feeling less driven. Agrian could see the boy start thinking about running as soon as he figured out the entity wouldn't be able to follow outside the dungeon.

"Come on then!" Agrian snarled at the space around them.

"Have at you! Scared, is that it? Scared of a thirteen year old boy?" Maybe hearing something heroic sounding would make his ally stick around.

"Are you scared of a thirteen year-old boy?" I asked my former apprentice, watching Agrian's face contort into a silent scream through the blips in my prison. They were growing more common, now, Sascithius' weakness turning into long lapses in his power to hold me. I had already started hammering away at his prison from within just as Agrian was scraping it away from without, and the results were striking. I had no doubt that as soon as my brother left, Sascithius would destroy me.

He still had enough power for that. As things were, however, he was forced to keep the bulk of his magic aimed on staving off Agrian from getting deeper into the dungeon, meanwhile he could not fully turn his strength against the boy without leaving me free to either escape, or mangle him from within my prison. He could have tried to simply let me go of course, and I had no doubt he had considered it.

There would be a brief window where he could turn his full strength against Agrian, maybe even kill the boy and his mysterious helper before I could join in or escape.

"You are drawing on my vital essence to restore your power, are you not?" I asked, working it all out at once now that the final puzzle piece was falling into place.

"That mess was created by you in the hopes of drawing people, non-combatants, into the dungeon to clean it, flies in your web. Now you hope to replenish yourself by feasting on us."

"So smart, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Wrong, idiot! Because I already have you, and your moron servant is running out of power. I don't need to snatch him, just wait until his mana runs dry, then I'll have you, him and that fool helping him!" I felt a stab of fear, realising he was correct. Agrian looked winded as if he were lifting twice his weight, and there was still so much of our enemy left to dismantle.

What would happen next was clear to me; Agrian would continue fighting, his mana would run close to empty, he would realise defeat was upon him and he would flee rather than continue with the risk of losing power at any moment. Maybe if he was willing to exhaust himself we would prevail, but he would not be. I was doomed.