Chương 44: Chapter 43: The Knowledge of Wizards

++The magicians of the world have always had a near-monopoly on secrets of every kind, by our very nature we tend to learn fast how to both steal and guard information. The magicians of Winzorth had turned this habit into an art form. ++ - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, 'The Great Lich'. 1, 891 A. E Agrian stayed true to his word, and refused to tell me about anything our father taught him for the remainder of our stay at Vornholt estate.

Ridiculously, he seemed to still want to be friendly with me even as he did. I shut that right down, of course. If I could not trust him to do the bare minimum of serving as a mindless extension to my glorious will, then I had no interest in humoring him with conversation, Our mother noticed, and attempted to make us speak more. I ignored her. My father noticed, and attributed my behaviour to 'womanly mood swings', which was just fine by me as it meant he did not even try to push me into speaking more with Agrian.

For the remainder of our stay, I found myself actually halfway at peace as I was largely left alone. And then, finally, the time came to return to our studies at the Winzorth Institute. I departed eagerly. My mother was not so eager, crying and hugging and kissing me, I could still feel the lingering touch of her repulsive flesh hours after departure. My father was less expressive, but no less emotional.

I saw him struggling to keep his face stoic as he bid Agrian and myself goodbye, while Victoria and Qaigor were virtually impossible to even understand as they wept. It was a relief to finally be out of that mansion and back on the rails. The closest thing to a pleasant parting I had before leaving fully was with Doctor Brown. He said goodbye and clearly had a lot of trivial emotions, but was decent enough to keep them to himself and do a good job of it. Before I knew it, Agrian and myself were on the train again.

Only an hour into our journey, my brother tried to speak with me.

"Isabel, you under—" —"shut up." I did not bother to raise my voice or even look at him, just cut him off as I gazed out the window.

"You can't ignore me for our entire time at the Institute," he snapped. I thought that was an amusing response on his part, simply because I could. It was not as if I actually needed his mindless conversation, and now that he already knew all my training techniques and showed the discipline to stick to them, I did not even have to ensure he kept up our routine to avoid weakening my own future subordinate. Outside, I saw the landscape of Garamon flitting by me.

Ordinarily I would have had something productive to do on this journey in-between training my Vessel, but with all my books finished already, I had a horrid abundance of free time. I decided to spend it on memorising the countryside this train was running through. It may be useful in navigating, one day. I had, after all, been stranded outside my home before already in this life.

"Are you studying the environment in case we get kidnapped again?" Agrian asked.

"No."

"I think you are."

"I do not care what you think."

"You know the odds of us being taken through this stretch of land if we are kidnapped are almost zero, right?"

"The odds of you surviving this train journey are growing closer to zero by the sentence." He sighed at that, like I was being terribly childish. Perhaps I ought to punish him for that slight somehow. I pondered that as we rode onwards. The train hissed to a stop just outside of Laugrey, and Agrian and I made our way from it. We were not surprised to find numerous guards already waiting in the station, with several magicians from the Institute with them.

Winzorth did not take the security of any of its students lightly, and that apparently went double for us. More guards emphasised this fact by revealing themselves from various compartments on the train itself, presumably having hidden away there to safeguard our journey rather than just our arrival.

"Isabel, Agrian," I looked up just in time to see the Grandmaster materialise, seemingly from thin air.

"You can translocate!" Agrian gasped, letting his awe flare up on full display.

"No he cannot," I cut in.

"He just cloaked his presence before walking over and undoing the spell when he was close." The Grandmaster arched an eyebrow.

"You can see through invisibility, Isabel?" If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"I can do lots of things," I replied. In fact, seeing through cloaking magic of the sort he could muster was not among them, but I could tell what he had done by the residual mana still lingering around him as the spell matrix dissolved. With practice, I might learn to track a cloak while it still existed by following that same mana.

"Did you come here just for us?" Agrian asked.

"We did, yes," the Grandmaster's smile did not reach his eyes.

"The two of you are the greatest assets the Winzorth Institute may ever know, of course we wish to ensure your safety." I could see Agrian was not convinced, and I of course knew that the Grandmaster was lying through his teeth. His motives were purely self-serving. I could respect that. We set off for the Winzorth Institute quickly. I had been hoping to see more of Laugrey this time, but our escort saw to it that we were moved through the city far too fast to soak much of anything up.

I had the distinct feeling of being a caged display animal as we went, guarded on all sides and stared at from every direction. Such was the fate of magical prodigies across all of history. Except for the very early era, in which they were superstitiously murdered. It was almost amusing how sour my luck had been in the grand scheme of things.

"I want to stop arguing," Agrian whispered to me as we approached the physical building of the Winzorth Institute at last. It was just as impressive as it had been when I first saw it. A marvel of both magical and mundane knowledge. I would learn it all, and build my own marvels ten times higher than this.

"We are not arguing," I told my brother as I stared distractedly at the sight.

"What are you ignoring me for then?" he sighed.

"Because you defied my will, and I am waiting for you to beg for my forgiveness."

"What? Gods, you're so fucking weird. Why do you say stuff like 'defy your will'?" I continued ignoring him, until Agrian finally sighed out another wave of exasperation—as if he had any right to be exasperated with me —and continued in a more apologetic tone.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you what father was teaching me, I just…you realise how sensitive that is, right?" I said nothing, and he continued, seeming to be growing more agitated.

"Isabel this is ridiculous, stop pretending not to understand. This is our family's legacy I'm talking about!"

"But I am family," I noted.

"And yet father insists I cannot carry on our family's legacy." One of the magicians nearest us started chuckling as he heard that. I turned to glare at him.

"Is something funny?"

"I think you're best served learning about your mother's legacy in the household, girl," he sneered. I decided instantly that he was a moron, and stopped registering his existence. Even most of the drooling magicians at the Winzorth Institute were less stupid than that one. Agrian, I noted, did not step in to defend me, just looked awkwardly away. He was getting very good at pretending not to have seen uncomfortable realities lately.

"You're family, but you're a girl and you'll grow into a woman. Even if you did end up running the estate, it wouldn't be the same. There'd be…obstacles." He was not, surely, about to describe the existence of misogyny to me, as if I did not already know. In most cases he would have had the excuse of my being eleven, but he knew perfectly well how aware I was of the world. This was one of the most ridiculous conversations I had ever been in.

"That has no bearing on my suggestion to you, and you know it," I countered.

"What is your real reason?" He paused again before finally answering.

"You're the smart one. You're the magically talented one. But I'm the man, you understand? It's my job to protect you."

"No it is not. I do not want protecting, and your attempts to do so are just making everything I try to do harder. Stop it." His eyes flashed.

"You know, most women are grateful to be coddled as much as you."

"Most women are barely more intelligent than the idiots who do their coddling." His breath caught in his throat, and he stared at me long and hard.

"Including mother?"

"Yes." She did, after all, love the man who hit her. I was sure there were all sorts of complicated reasons behind that, but I did not especially care for them. Fools who bowed and scraped before an authority below themselves were just as irritating to me as the idiots who became those authorities. A God was nothing without its worshippers.

Agrian was silent as we reached the building once more, and I turned towards the housing area, quite ready to simply throw myself into bed and devour a few more of the Winzorth Institute's arcane tomes. I was stopped from making my turn by a gentle but firm hand on the shoulder, one of the magicians guiding me back the way I was moving away from.

"Not yet, girl, there's a meeting for all the apprentices. An announcement." Well that was interesting, even I did not know what it might be about. That meant either the Grandmaster had kept it from me, which was unlikely, or it had been decided only in the time since I last saw him. We kept moving. It was not often that I got to see all of the Winzorth Institute's apprentices gathered in one spot.

Its great hall was barely large enough to fit them, more than half full and cramped enough that just walking from one end to another would be a tripping hazard. We were all organised by seniority and, thus, power. Everything in the world of magicians was. The junior apprentices were at the back, able to hear the speaker at the front of the hall only due to sound-amplifying magic, while senior apprentices stood directly ahead of us, and the novices hogged the lion's share of the viewat the front.

Professors lined the sides of the hall. It occurred to me that this had all the makings of an extremely large sacrifice to my idiot apprentice, but I dismissed that thought quickly. In his weakened state, Sascithius would be lucky to muster even one thousandth of the magical power lingering in this hall. He could not possibly capture and drain everyone here. For several minutes nothing happened.

It was not pleasant for me, surrounded on all sides by far larger bodies, most of them twice my size and all of them repugnantly human. Their reek made my eyes water, and each minor movement threatened to bash me down to the floor. At last, the Grandmaster made himself known at the head of the stage capping one end of the hall. All the muttering and whispers fell silent, and we all listened.

"Welcome back, students of Winzorth," he called out. His voice was booming and powerful, and with his level of mastery it was utterly impossible to tell if that was magical or simply a quirk of nature. I would have to learn how to see past his cloaking magic before next summer.

"I am sure you are all wondering why you have been gathered here…" The room tensed as one thousand magical geniuses and a half-dozen generational freaks waited for their answer. He did not beat around the bush.

"... I will make this brief. War is coming, and we will be making each of you into a weapon."