Chương 46: Chapter 45: A Toe in the Water

++Being an immortal, almighty magical being was never all it was cracked up to be. The first problem any budding lich will discover is just how much competition they have in the 'greater-than-human magical schemer' category. And only some of this comes from other liches. ++ - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, 'The Great Lich'. 1, 891 A. E Lessons in combat magic were to begin quickly, though to my surprise they did not start right away.

Apparently facilities were still in need of setting up before they could occur. That was another useful hint, it told me that however connected the Winzorth Institute's Grandmaster was to the Garamon rumour mill, it was not well enough that he heard news of the upcoming war more than, at most, a week or two earlier. It seemed my father's military connections were far quicker in this regard than the Grandmaster's own tendrils. It would be an advantage, one day, when our alliance broke.

For now, I had a hard time worrying about the upcoming training. I had a hard time worrying about anything at all, in fact, because my next class was with Professor Bogern, and it would be the one to finally introduce actual, practical conjuration to our curriculum. Agrian was, if anything, even more enthusiastic than myself, and we both arrived in the lecture hall a good ten minutes early. We were only the second and third students to arrive.

First was Alira Bella Paula, towering in her seat as much as she ever did. The years had mellowed some of the woman's perpetual anger at being stuck in a class of students so much younger than herself, though she still was known to scowl more than just occasionally. I, of all people, seemed to be the subject of her most sociable behaviour. Why that was, I neither knew nor cared. The rest of the class arrived shortly after us, and for once it was Professor Bogern who was the last to arrive.

He did not seem remotely surprised by this fact.

"Wonder what has all of you so eager," he chuckled. Nobody else laughed at the quip, just waited like salivating dogs for the practical teachings to begin. He seemed to be taking his sweet time in setting up and preparing the lesson.

"Alright, I'll give you what you're all here for. Conjuration, yes? Practical conjuration. I promised all of you a first step towards doing instead of knowing, and I think all of you have enough technical knowledge that we can start that now without anybody dying. Some ground rules first. The astute among you may have noticed that your seats and desks are all warded. That was me. Stay in them, no matter what happens. I cannot guarantee your safety, or your survival, if you do not."

I had noticed the warding, and deduced why it was there, but apparently most of my classmates were not quite so observant. A round of murmuring and excited chatter ran out through the room, silenced by a gesture from Bogern.

"I do not say that lightly. What you are about to witness is, in all likelihood, the most dangerous creature any of you have ever seen. Do not take this as entertainment." The room quietened, and only when the eagerness had fully been replaced by a mounting block of fear did Professor Bogern finally brighten up slightly.

"With that in mind, I am an expert. Provided you all do as you're told, there shan't be any casualties. Except myself perhaps." He chuckled again, and again nobody joined him in it. We all just watched in silence as he gathered his mana. I found myself committing every strand of mana he controlled to memory. His dexterity with magic was definitely not superior to mine, not anymore, but the raw power at his fingertips was still more than I could have managed.

Ordinary men—even ordinary magicians—did not, after all, become Professors at the Winzorth Institute. I doubted there were many pairs of battlemages in the world who could match him for brute force. What was more interesting was the fact that every bit of this magic was being put to use seemingly on empty space. I watched mana seep into the air and rip it open, then felt my ears pop as infernal winds washed through the room.

Children cried out in fear, Agrian glanced furtively over at me and seemingly prepared to leap from his seat in my defence. Then the summoning concluded. I saw long limbs crawling out from a slit in reality, ending in fingers as jagged and hooked as any skeleton's digits. To my surprise, however, I saw a human attached to the limb. Starved, thin and clearly worn, but undeniably a human.

Hollow eyes flashed out from sunken sockets as they gazed across the room, their lips moving in silence, their throat convulsing in vain. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"A summoned creature," Bogern declared.

"Behold it and tremble." I did not see much to be wary of, personally, though I had to admit its magic was noteworthy. Almost a match for Bogern himself, and I could see it straining against the very spell that had brought it here. The summon looked far from pleased.

"That's a person!" someone called out, pure horror in their voice and making it waver. Bogern looked around to find the speaker, then shrugged upon failing.

"It is not," he said confidently.

"Are you, #*//. #]?" The room shuddered as he said the being's name, and I watched its human facade melt back to reveal something made of light and sound, that stung to stare at directly. I had been around the world enough to identify one of the fae when it was shackled before me. That, at least, explained its ludicrous magical power.

"Did you summon me just for another of your little demonstrations? Is that what this is, Ludvar? It's that time of the year again?"

"It is," he confirmed with a smile.

"Now begone." The tear in reality closed, and the fae was dragged, screeching, back through it. All that was left of it a few moments later was a lingering tuft of mana in the air, and the echo of its hateful curses. Professor Bogern turned back to the class at large.

"Do any of you know what that was?" I did not say anything. Description of the fae did exist among the books I had read so far, but it had all been vague and unhelpful. I suspected that detailed knowledge on them would be considered suspicious, at least for a child of my age.

"No?" the Professor tried, apparently hoping to coax an answer.

"As expected. It was a rare creature, in this realm. One that you had all best hope never to encounter in the wild." I silently agreed with that. Paula was the first to break our silence.

"What was it?" she asked, angry I thought. She seemed to get angry a lot, perhaps this was some way of processing her fear. I had noticed her trembling alongside everyone else, despite her age.

"There are many words for them, but the most common, historically at least, is the fae. Nature spirits long since declared traitors against the Gods." That was interesting to me, mainly because it was at least half right. I did not think the fae were spirits of nature, but they were certainly bound to it in some ways. I had known an especially powerful member of their species to delay summer across a whole region, just in a fit of rage.

Weaker, more common fae tended to have far less influence than that, and many of their most minor familiars were less powerful even than most human magicians, but the truly strong ones were a force to be reckoned with. At least in my time.

"What did they do to act against the Gods?" I asked, deciding that this was probably the best way to get my real question—when and how the fae were wiped out—answered without betraying a certain knowledge of their past numbers. I had found it odd, how little I had encountered them now.

"The histories are somewhat unclear on that," Bogern said after a moment.

"But it is said that in ages gone, faerie pacts varied much more than they do now. Deals like the one I have with the fae I just summoned and bound before your eyes are more of a modern construction, skewed heavily towards favouring the human's side of things. A thousand years ago, the fae were far more sneaky and predatory with their contracts, and so the Gods, ever our protectors, struck them down in retaliation."

I translated that: the fae and their penchant for snatching humans away to their own realm, or else keeping them shackled and enthralled after making a deal, were deemed to be a problem by the Gods, who also gained influence by tricking and enslaving humans, and so the Gods declared war on them to eliminate a rival faction in the same field. Back in my time, I had never dealt with the fae much, except as potential competition and threats.

They were naturally hostile to humans, and this did not change following a mere few thousand years of my existence spent as an undead. If anything, being undead, they loathed me all the more. Now, though, times were changing, and if the Gods had instated some moronic pogrom on the fae, then it seemed to me I had a potential window to forge an actual alliance with them.

At least until they inevitably betrayed me, but provided I could guarantee that would not happen until far in the future, I would still get a good amount of use from them in the present. Desperation made people dangerous, but it also made them oddly reliable, when leveraged properly. More questions were flung out about both the fae and the summoning, and I made sure to be heard asking about its magic strength and qualities to hide the fact that I had been able to physically perceive them myself.

Mana-sight seemed to still be a unique trait, even in this new era, and I would not bank on the Gods overlooking its second appearance like they had my new talent. Agrian himself was quiet about the fae, looking only disturbed as he stared at where it had been. I thought for a moment that he may just lock down for the whole class, but eventually his question escaped. To my surprise, it was an interesting one as well.

"Where do they come from?" he asked at last. Ah, the classic question. I was surprised to have found that the people of Garamon actually seemed to have worked out, as I did some five millennia ago, that humanity was descended from common apes rather than created as they were by divine hands, but I had no clue what answers they possessed about the fae. I myself had never actually produced any. The Professor just shook his head.

"We have no way of knowing, though some consider them to be the spirits of long-dead magicians, some twisted mutate of a Godtouched or any number of other things." It was to be expected, they had always been a secretive lot. Bogern spoke up again before more questions could follow.

"Right, we're nearing the end of our time now, so I'll say this quickly before you all leave. None of you are to attempt to emulate the spell you saw just now, but rest assured we will, slowly, be learning a weaker variant. This was your introduction into practical conjuration, within the month, the fastest of you will be summoning and binding your very own fae. I hope that's interesting enough for you all." Now that, I had to admit, excited me.