Chương 74: Chapter 72.5: Ancient Mechanisms

++Never has there been a better example of politics and its involvement in science than the dichotomy between Garamon and Ancient Estalia. It just goes to show how everyone except me is a drooling moron who should do as I say. ++ - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, 'The Great Lich'. 1, 891 A. E. It was both relieving and humbling to see that the continental lands of Irucci had not changed, nor had the sands of the northern stretch that now housed the nation known as Estalia.

Thousands of years had passed, even in the quicker timestream of the physical world, during my imprisonment. Mankind had risen and mastered countless fields. Nations had been born, lines drawn upon a map, and that same map expanded to cover almost every scrap of land in the entirety of Arwyna's surface. It was a new world. And it was not, because with the perspective drawn back beyond the limited glimpse of humanity, all of those changes were small and insubstantial.

"Why are we walking?" Bagran asked early into our journey. He was not unfit, but clearly not used to long, uncomfortable treks. I could feel wisps of his power sapping heat out of his flesh and releasing it into the air, keeping his body cool. Compared to the endless bombardment of Arwyna's sun, it achieved little.

"Skyships are not subtle," Aryqatan explained.

"And this mission needs to be." That piqued my interest.

"We are not just joining up with another military force?" I had found it strange to be moving in such a small number, but had assumed it was just some organisational issue. The Demigod's look back at me confirmed otherwise.

"No. This is reconnaissance. All of you are here to get a taste of combat, ideally, but mostly to learn how to operate independently and under a Demigod's supervision." She sounded bitter as she said it, which I tucked away for later use. There was an infinite variety of functions you could make an enemy's insecurities serve if you used them right.

"What's the reconnaissance for?" Agrian asked. The Demigod bristled.

"That's none of your concern" The boy frowned. Clearly, he thought it was our concern. Equally clearly, he knew better than to get into an argument with one of the Gods' scions.

"I don't need to know," Korig added eagerly.

"We're doing the Gods' work here, I understand that. Just give me my task and it'll be done, your Divinity!" Oh no, I had seen his type numerous times before. A fanatic. They were never good to have on your side. Irruci's landscape remained as hostile as ever as we walked, and after a while Aryqatan began to give us more details on our assignment of her own volition.

"There are rumours of a cult, a powerful one. A necromantic one. Dedicated to the Dread Necromancer Sakhent. Have any of you heard of him?" A shudder ran through the group. I had, naturally, and even my fellow novices seemed to have. Sakhent was one of the most feared necromancers in all of history. He had lived a few millennia after my time, rising to prominence in the delta civilisation that later came to be known as Estalia.

A powerful priest-king turned nemesis of the Gods, his reaction to the demands of Nglaru to bow down and submit was a rare example of something I actually approved of in human history. The resulting war had lasted for over a century, and ended with Sakhent's supposed destruction.

"I'll take that as a yes," Aryqatan noted, though nobody had actually given her a verbal answer.

"He's a demon," Korig whispered.

"In human form."

"Not quite," I cut in before the Demigod could.

"He was a prodigy of magic, and benefitted from being exposed to one of the more advanced necromantic cultures in human history. Everything he did was pure magic." And it was made all the more impressive by his being, as far as I could tell, a second rate talent at best. No doubt he would have been fawned over in the Winzorth Institute, but he would not have even been on the same scale as me. Korig seemed to have stopped listening to my explanation halfway through, his hands curling into tight fists.

"Necromancer," he spat. Pure disgust frothed forth from his lips. Bagran and Varnal seemed less perturbed, with the former more disdainful and the latter utterly uncaring.

"So we're going after the followers of some mad magician, is that it?" Bagran asked.

"Hardly seems like cause to send a Demigod." Aryqatan's glare could have frozen steam.

"It is not your place to decide what is and is not cause to send a Demigod, magician," she spat.

"You are here to learn and to do as I say, that is all." We walked in deeper silence at that. Our destination, I soon learned, was not just any point in Estalia, but the ruins of Itenzhor, formerly the heart of Ancient Estalian civilization and the place in which Sakhent had first risen to take power over his homeland. And upon hearing that, I felt a shot of excitement. I was the greatest magical prodigy I had ever seen evidence of existing, but I was not infallible.

It was possible for other magicians to think of something I did not, either through good luck or simply approaching things from an angle I had not considered. When one expanded from a single magician to a whole society of them, teaching and learning from each other generation after generation, things soon became skewed against my lone genius. This was ultimately why I had learned so much since being reborn. But never in necromancy.

Garamon hated that magic, and now I was walking towards the ruins of a culture that had once celebrated it above all others. I was quivering at the thought of seeing what I could learn there. Before I got to do that, however, I still had the walk. This new, organic body of mine was fit and healthy, I had made sure to see to that, but it still tired and weakened with effort. I was still living. Sweat soon oozed up from my skin, left the clothes clinging to me and my hair flat against the scalp.

Bagran started passing the time by saying crude things about what this let him see, but before long the heat and fatigue was too much for even him to continue. Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. All of us began using our magic to regulate temperature as we went, and I found use for a new spell to produce water from the very air by filtering it out as tiny beads of moisture.

I was shocked at how ineffective it was in this environment; the very atmosphere seemed parched and thirsty. For a day we walked, then came night and the world became as cold as it had been hot. We made camp amid a set of aether walls, angled and thickened so that anything hostile that may spot us in the dark would not simply burst through and kill us before we could react. Such precautions may have been pointless with a Demigod present, but we took them anyway. If nothing else, it was a good habit to get into.

Aryqatan was seated relatively far from the rest of us; apparently it would not have been proper for a Demigod to lay down too close to mere humans. That left the Institute students to sit and talk amongst ourselves.

"I can't believe we're actually going to see combat," Korig grinned. His face was coloured in by the dancing firelight, and shadows stretched and quivered over every crease. His was a lined set of features. Wrinkles already etched deep by the hard years he had lived as a commoner before his talent was discovered.

"Will we though," Bagran scowled.

"That Demigod…it's rather like we're a bunch of normal men accompanying a magician, compared to her, isn't it? I'd be surprised if we actually get any fighting done."

"We must do," Varnal cut in. He looked desperate suddenly, almost…hungry.

"There'll be fighting. I know it." Most of the others edged a bit away from him at that, apparently unnerved by him. Modern people and their sensibilities.

"I'm just wondering what's going on with this cult," Agrian frowned.

"It can't just be a bunch of necromancers if they're sending a Demigod, right?"

"You are probably coming at this from the wrong direction," I told him.

"I doubt this is about us at all, we are just an excuse. Aryqatan was clearly bitter to be sent on this mission, there are clearly other things she would rather do. It is being done to either punish or circumscribe her in some way. Someone is keeping her here so that she does not distinguish herself in a more significant battlefield. As for our presence… I suspect this cult is powerful, indeed, if we are being sent. The Gods do not trust higher-up, fully trained magicians not to have joined it in secret."

Aryqatan shifted slightly in her sleep, almost imperceptibly. The message in her motion got across clear as day all the same. Conversation died down.

Come morning, we were moving fast again. Sleep had done little to restore fatigue, and we were relying increasingly on our magic to support our bodies. I, irritatingly enough, was relying on it most of all. Mine was a healthy and fit frame, but it was also a female one, which meant short legs. I had half a mind to lighten my load by hacking off the damned lumps of fat wobbling around on my torso. But that sort of bodily disregard would be what some might call 'suspicious'.

"Do you need a hand?" Agrian asked me. I turned to glare his way.

"With walking?"

"Yes," he said bluntly.

"With walking. Because you're clearly struggling. I'm asking quietly and subtly so you can say no without it being embarrassing." I was forced to pause at that, and admit that my brother had actually done well.

"... No, your services are not needed," I said after a second.

"But you served me well by asking."

"You're so fucking weird," he muttered as he walked back away. We continued trudging on, all of us but Aryqatan struggling. She seemed to find her ten thousandth step as effortless as the first. Exhaustion warred with excitement in my mind, but the contest was short-lived from there. Soon enough I saw a dot on the horizon that quickly grew to reveal our destination; Itenzor. Or its ruins, rather, which was actually just as good for me.

I did not need to speak with any of the place's inhabitants, I simply needed their knowledge. And magicians tended to write things down. Besides, when one happens to be the inventor of necromancy, one finds that a person being dead is not much of an obstacle to interrogating them. If anything, it makes it rather easier.

"Everyone remember their roles?" Aryqatan asked as we neared the city. She received five answers to the affirmative. Each of us had been given a basic task; Agrian and Bagran were the most powerful of the boys, and thus expected to wield offensive magics. Korig's skill in counter-necromantic mana manipulation was to ward off assaults from the dead, while Varnal's rare skill in transfiguration would serve as a form of battlefield control.

I, as the Demigod had so eloquently put, was to "wait until someone fucks up, then start doing their job better than they were". Not an especially creative use of my talents, but if necessity breeds innovation it stood to reason that my abilities bred no sort of strategy at all. The city loomed larger. I studied its architecture from afar and felt nostalgic.

There were no pyramids here, which I was disappointed by after hearing so much of Estalian pyramids in books and anecdotes, but the buildings were just the angular sandstone masterworks I had come to expect. Time had eroded much, but the structures still remained proud and defiant. One unyielding fossil regarding another. It was an oddly sentimental thought for me. I did hope I was not being infected by humanity. We approached cautiously, more out of paranoia than anything.

I could not see even a trace of magic still lingering in the ancient place. Closer we came, and still I saw no trace. Not until we crossed the threshold of the city's outer walls and I suddenly found my senses alight with old magic.

"What…is that?" Agrian asked, looking around and frowning.

"Do any of you feel that?"

"I think so," Bagran mumbled, though he seemed less certain than my brother.

"Magic," the Demigod hissed, most certain of all save myself.

"It was hidden before. What do you feel, Isabel?"

"Magic, as you said," I replied.

"And yes, I did not feel it before either. It was obfuscated by powers I have never encountered before."

"So we're dealing with something a schoolgirl hasn't encountered, colour me intimidated," Aryqatan growled. She was nervous, I suspected, and not very good at hiding that fact. I watched her think for a few moments before the next order came.

"We continue onwards. The magic here isn't…that…strong…" I had felt it before she seemed to have, and I had seen it sooner still. The magic in question was growing by the moment, rising like a river threatening to burst its banks. It was not often I got to see a Demigod scared. Given the circumstances, I did not get to enjoy the sight this time.

"We're leaving now." Aryqatan sounded more certain than I had yet heard her, and though I disagreed, I did not see a good opportunity to openly disobey. As of this moment there was an unknown danger ahead and the Demigod would not tolerate dissent. We all turned for the city's outskirts and headed towards them at a swift pace. Too slow. Something reared up ahead of it, black and potent.

Magic of the sort Garamon's Gods considered 'dark', like a wall of molten pitch that ate the light and promised death for anything that dared to draw near. We did not dare. All of us stumbled to a halt and spent a few precious moments staring at it, some in fascination and others in dread.

"What is it?" Bagran asked. Agrian was a bit more practical with his curiosity, hurling a magic missile which would have mangled a steel hull. It fizzled out against the magic, and all eyes turned to me and Aryqatan.

"I do not know how much more powerful I am than Agrian," I frowned, "but I am not doing anything to that."

"And I'm physically-oriented," the Demigod added.

"So I'm not risking it, not with…necromancy." She shuddered. Interesting that she could identify the magical type, I saved that for later. Before any more words could be exchanged, the ground rumbled and more power split off from the main body of the barricade. We all stumbled back and away from it, some of us barely dodging the black wall as it shot along the earth. In moments each of us was isolated, cut off from the others by the same impenetrable wall that held us inside the ruins.

"Fuck," the Demigod cried.

"Fuck! Uh, okay, everyone stick to—what the hell are you doing?"

"I CANNOT HEAR ANY OF YOU," I called out over the barrier.

"BUT I CAN GUESS WHAT OUR PLAN IS, WE WILL RECONVENE DEEPER IN THE RUINS WHERE THE BARRIER DOES NOT SEEM TO STRETCH." I heard the Demigod cursing after me, and promptly ignored her as I ventured deeper. There was knowledge awaiting me after all. What was a little thing like the rage of a Demigod compared to that?