Chương 54: Chapter 53: A Future Concern

++Artillery is a wonderful invention, easily one of my favourites in human history. I had never concerned myself too much with it in my first life, but as in so many other things my rebirth brought new grounds to think about it. ++ - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, 'The Great Lich'. 1, 891 A. E. I was not in the mood for being inconvenienced. My infernal innards were still rebelling against me, defying my glorious will with shots of pain and endless throbs.

More than once I lost my temper and pounded a fist down over the spot responsible for my torment. This did not alleviate the situation. All I wanted was to use my time productively, and of course the cramps of my disgusting meaty body were not an obstacle to that. I had remained focused and patient for practically an eternity inside the Depths, keeping my will aimed straight ahead at the horizon no matter how much time threatened to shatter my sanity. A little thing like this?

Mundane, physical pain, felt over days instead of aeons? It was nothing, an irritant at best. The truth was, as angry as it made me to have a body that was so pointlessly miserable for no reason at all, the actual problem was not that great. I could simply ignore it. What I could not ignore, of course, was a summons from my father. Receiving one of these at the estate had always left me irritated and bracing myself for some new demonstration of the depths of stupidity.

Receiving one at the Winzorth Institute felt wrong and violating, two worlds that ought never have touched pressed against each other and catching me in-between them. More importantly, it ate into my time. I had just coined a new experiment for my pet warrior, and had been excited to go about seeing its results. I was already angry to have been dragged up from my sofa to answer the door, and the courier who brought it to me withered beneath my glare.

Apparently, I had recently become old enough that my glares were unnerving instead of cute. That was small consolation, but consolation nonetheless.

"Tell him to give me ten minutes," I told the courier. He managed a weak smile that only irritated me all the more. This man reminded me of a weasel, some small and cowardly thing. A natural victim who over-emphasised its own weakness in the hopes of meeting predators too lazy to victimize it more. He was one of my least-favourite types of people.

"I…am afraid the Baron was quite insistent, my lady," he queasily argued.

"I will turn you into a snail and drop you into a pot of salt if you stand here taking up even an additional second of my time," I told him. A man set on fire and sprinting for water would not have fled from me as fast. Good. Five minutes gave me enough time to make sure nothing leaked from my ruptured vessel of a body, the remaining five left me to sit around and stew in my anger.

I was just a shade reluctant as I left, still wondering about the benefits of letting my father think he could summon me even here against drawing out his rage. But for now, it was still better to be seen as weak and docile. My time would come. The Winzorth Institute felt different as I moved through it. Of course, I knew about the unsanitary mess that my lower body had turned into, and it seemed obvious enough that I expected the whole world around me to take note as well.

They did not, leave it to the common people of this era to notice precisely nothing. They blended in with the gilded halls and the magically-humming lights as always, and I made my way past them to the foyer. My father, by contrast, stuck out like a thumb that was not only sore, but had been violently removed with the jagged end of a broken brick, then clumsily stitched back on to the wrong portion of its hand. He smiled as he saw me, the way bankers must smile when they see their fortune.

"Isabel, good seeing you again," the Baron nodded. He kept his face carefully still, like always, though it was broiling with emotion below the mask, like always. I for one did not have to fake my own stoic stare back.

"Father," I nodded in turn. The room we were in was as much a meeting chamber, built for visiting family members to stay comfortably without tainting the rest of the Institute with their presence. Most of the visiting family Winzorth students received were, themselves, other magicians, but there were enough noble children that the Institute's higher-ups had found it worth constructing a chamber to hold them separate from the wider population. Aristocracy and literacy did not mix.

"Your brother should be arriving shortly," my father said as he hovered around me, apparently not sure what to do with his hands now that I was apparently, fortunately, too big to embrace.

"I see," I replied.

"It is good to see you." He liked it when I said things like that, and there was no benefit in keeping him in a bad mood until I was powerful enough to do as I pleased.

"I just wanted to swing by and check up on you," he grinned.

"I was in Laugrey for…uh, work, you see, and well, why not? Since I was in the area." He was hiding something, but that was no surprise. He always hid things from me.

"I see. Thank you," I nodded. My father's smile became a bit strained.

"Are you alright dear?"

"I am fine," I lied. I had no intention of telling him about my new medical developments, if this dull ape found out my reproductive system was finally developed there were very high odds he would drag me out of the Institute to enter into some mouth-breathing eugenics program. Fortunately Agrian saved me from offering any further explanation. Agrian the Younger, that was. He entered the reception hall just at that moment and his face lit up at the sight of our father.

"I didn't believe you were here at first!" he grinned, rushing over to him for a moment before seeming to remember himself. My brother was only walking by the time he reached our father, reaching a stiff hand out to be shaken rather than both arms for a hug. The Baron did the same. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

"As I was telling Isabel," he grinned, "I was in the area and remembered you were both here. How are things going?" Looking at them both now, they seemed like mirrored images of each other. Our father was well preserved despite now closing in on age fifty, probably thanks in part to his being such a strong warrior, and Agrian may have been mistaken for his brother. An older one, without doubt, though. The Baron still looked double Agrian's age. The handshake broke on my brother's end first as he took a step back.

"We've been learning…" he seemed to forget himself for a moment, looking around furtively. It was pure paranoia, but a good habit. A magician never did know when he was being spied on. I suspected there were listening ears in that foyer belonging to more than just one party.

"We are learning war magic," I told our father. There was no point in hiding it from him, and if we could get a reputation for being loose-lipped and easily known then it would benefit me by making people look that less hard into any of my real schemes.

"Both of you?" the Baron asked, sharply. Agrian actually took a step back from him apparently on reflex, I held my ground.

"There is a war coming up, you must know this already given your connections." I thought he would like that, and it seemed I was right. His expression softened a shade.

"A girl, though, Isabel. A little girl like you, learning to fight? They won't be marching you out, not my damned daughter!" In fact, they would not be, but the reasons for why that was were as lost to him as so many other complex things.

"They're not going to march any of us out, father," Agrian tried.

"You're damned right they aren't," the Baron growled.

"Where's the one who made this decision, anyway?"

"Nobody knows who made it," I cut in, before Agrian could do something disastrously stupid like tell our father the truth.

"It just happened one day, we think it came from Parliament." The Baron was not happy with that either, but he contented himself by growling in irritation rather than breaking anything, or anyone.

"Bah, bloody magicians. Well I came here to spend time with you both, what say we put this out of mind and do that before I burst a vein or start throwing punches?" I let him extract me from the Institute, if only to avoid another aristocratic tantrum on his part. People already mocked Agrian and myself for our heritage, at Winzorth, and it would do our reputation with the magician class no favours for them to witness such a thing. Particularly if the Baron was stupid enough to actually kill someone.

The biggest obstacle in leaving was with the Winzorth Institute itself, which seemed to be far more paranoid about our safety than our own father. By this point, however, even myself and Agrian did not fear kidnapping too much. I had recently surpassed a maximum output of five thousand vis, with Agrian himself closing in on four thousand. Attempting to snatch us was now equivalent to charging a whole regiment of gunmen. Our father added some difficult-to-quantify amount of martial strength to that equation as well.

I did not know how much, but would have to find out. It would be useful to know how I measured up to him.

"Now, how much of Laugrey have the two of you actually seen?" he asked us as we walked. Agrian looked embarrassed at the question, I simply answered it.

"Almost nothing," I told our father.

"We are kept up tight inside the Winzorth Institute, a precaution against kidnapping." I knew for a fact that the Baron had been ranting and raving about us being at risk of kidnapping when asked to send me, but that did not stop him from being equally angry now upon hearing that.

"Keeping you caged like bloody animals! Well we're going to see everything then!" He declared, "everything of note. All the sights, and more. Come with me, the two of you are finally going to find out how wonderful the heart of the Empire is." I had to admit, for once, I was actually enthusiastic to go along with my father's daily whim. Scoping out Laugrey had long been on my to-do list, and I had spent a great deal of time cooped up in my new laboratory of late. There was Paula, too.

I did not like thinking about her, it made me angry for some reason. Perhaps that was just the period pains. Our first major sight was Laugrey Bridge. I had heard more than a little about this, and finally seeing it with my own eyes I found that the stories had not done the structure justice. It reached across the width of a river almost as wide as the vast, continent-spanning flow that had nourished early civilisations back in the region of my first birth.

Held high aloft by towering pillars of stone, the bridge itself was broad enough that an army could have marched over it with little delay. Arches dotted its underside, built, I knew thanks to my new mathematical knowledge, to best bear its colossal weight, and here and there beams of iron or steel worked to compensate where the weaker material could not manage alone. I had seen bigger buildings, but none were as impressive.

"This, children, is the heart of Laugrey. Of Garamon." My father's voice was a blast furnace of pride, though Agrian had other concerns than the moment.

"We're not children anymore," he growled.

"I'm not, at least." I shot him a look to let him know that the slight was not forgotten, while our father laughed and reached out to ruffle both of our hair.

"You'll always be children to me, I fear."

"Unhand me," I told him, then bit him when he only laughed more. The shock did its work of drawing his arm back, at least. I followed it up with a question before his surprise could settle into a less convenient emotion.

"What is the bridge used for?" I asked abruptly.

"It is not just a vanity project, is it?" My father overcame his shock quickly to answer.

"No, of course not. That's the main connector between Laugrey's two sides, very useful in transporting goods between them, and just for travel through boats upriver. Believe me, this whole city is a mess of negotiation, business and diplomacy. It'd all grind to a halt without that bridge." That was good to know. When I eventually made my move, freezing Laugrey's economy with a single attack would be quite the opener to whatever I chose to do after. It was also only the beginning of what we saw.

The Baron was starting to let his exterior thaw away as he relaxed in our presence, having apparently entered the Winzorth Institute in 'aristocrat' condition. Simply walking, talking and viewing things did a lot to unravel him. I, for one, kept myself thoroughly taut. My innards were still causing me pain with every step, and my intellectual fascination with what we were being shown did little to distract me from it all. Before long I was itching to get back to my experiments.

Still, there were less things to be kept busy with seeing. Putting aside the numerous people clearly homeless and living on the streets, that was. They were of little interest to me, except as a possible source of rebellion in the future. Destabilising Garamon would be useful too. I took note of the tower centring the city, just a short distance from the main palace. That was where my father paused and stared at it, face suddenly hard.

"This," he pointed to the building.

"This is the most important place in the world. It is where our King rests, divine ichor flowing through his veins and all. That is the single spot that Garamon is built around. It's not a Laugrey site, its a human site, you understand?" Agrian had grown just as serious as the Baron, though apparently he did not quite grasp what was being said.

"You are telling us that is the seat of the Gods' influence," I translated. My voice was mechanical and calm, which was a relief. I would hate to find that my new fleshy body had started to give away my emotions so easily.

"Yes," the Baron confirmed. He smiled at it as we stood there in silence. Clearly, he was thinking different thoughts than me. I was less concerned with the majesty of it all than the best way to strike at it.