Chương 87: Chapter 79.5 - Concessions and Salvage

++The mindless destruction of war has always been among the most loathsome things about it. People speak of undead soldiers as monstrosities, yet for all that they are, the things are far less pointless in their violence than human soldiers. No reanimate will ruin for the sake of ruining quite like a human flooded with adrenaline. ++ - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, 'The Great Lich'. 1, 891 A. E. Nesariyah had never been so scared in her life.

In a single stroke she'd been introduced to new grades of terror, a new flavour of fear. She'd grown up as the daughter of a high priest, and for much of that life her greatest concern had been political. Her father's position, her position by extension, and her inevitable future in being used to breed a new generation of priests and priestesses, such was the inevitable fate of all prodigies. It all seemed so small now, with the threat of death hanging over her.

But the foreign girl who had so easily killed Nesariyah's father did not change her mind in a sudden bout of fickle violence. As she had said, the rest of her people wrought havoc upon the city, but she alone seemed more concerned with the contents of the temple. In particular, with its books and tomes. This was where Nesariyah discovered her use to the girl, because she was the one who was instructed to identify and pick out the texts of greatest value and occult learning.

At first she considered lying, trying to hide the truly important ones. The foreigner had taught her the folly of that by burning the books she had not stuffed into the great box they were using to transport them.

"Were those the real treasures of this chamber?" she asked Nesariyah idly.

"I hope not, but if they were, you now know that your only chance to preserve your people's knowledge is to honestly identify it to me." Nesariyah hated this girl. She hated how her face never seemed to move when her lips did, hated how she'd somehow made it seem like this destruction was Nesariyah's own fault. If you cared about these books, why'd you help an army fight its way into Orapathaqi just to destroy them? They continued their work, and now Nesariyah did all she could to help.

Whatever her feelings were, they didn't change the simple fact that this foreigner had made herself the safest bet for preserving the priesthood's knowledge. Despite Nesariyah's effort, though, things did not continue without a hitch. More than once their efforts were interrupted. The first few times were brief interjections that ended fast, half-drunk soldiers stumbling into the hall and whooping out for priestesses. The girl told Nesariyah to hide, which she did, and stood waiting for them.

"This area is under the jurisdiction of the battlemages, Second Casting Corps," she told the men in the common tongue of Garamon. Nesariyah had decided not to let slip that she spoke it, figuring it was some minor advantage that she may as well keep. Even with her secret fluency, the response of the brigands was hard to follow.

"Fuck off it is," the closest of them, perhaps a sort of leader, snarled." We fought our way into this city, not you. You little…" he frowned, seemingly exerting a great deal of thought for a few moments.

"... Whore," he finished triumphantly. The girl did not even blink at the insult, nor the fact that she was staring down several armed men with shortened inhibitions. Of course she wasn't, Nesariyah had seen her magic. The girl's eyes lazily drifted over the men, then she raised a finger. Just the one. It was all that proved necessary. Magic pooled out at the tip of that finger, more than most apprentices could have mustered with both arms, and Nesariyah felt a chill.

The room's temperature plummeted enough that frost formed along its walls and floor, leaving the soldiers' breaths visible as clouds of mist. Drunk as they were, even they noticed this and backed away fast. The guns on their shoulders were forgotten and they stumbled off in search of easier victims elsewhere. Nesariyah wheezed out the last choking clots of fear from her chest only once they had disappeared from sight.

"Get back to work," the girl instructed her.

"They are only the first of many." She was right. More came, most drunken soldiers who were easily dissuaded. It was only when men in brighter uniforms that Nesariyah recognised as more of Garamon's magicians arrived that things became truly problematic.

"What are you doing here, girl?" one such man demanded, as two more waited behind him. He took a sharp look at Nesariyah and the books, then sneered.

"Pilfering necromantic tomes to sell on, are you? That's a hanging offence you know, little lady." They were deeper in the temple than the soldiers had been, the girl had chosen to lead these invaders right to the corridor she'd killed Nesariyah's father in for some reason. Nesariyah remained silent and still and just hoped with all she had that the conflict would end as innocuously as the last.

"I am collecting tomes here to be analyzed by the Demigod Aryqatan, who will decide what is done with them herself." Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

"And you think that takes precedence over our orders to secure the place, I suppose," the magicians' leader sneered.

"Orders from whom?" the girl asked.

"Orders from; 'I'm the ranking magician here', you little cunt." The girl looked at him with a curious expression. It seemed to Nesariyah that she was attempting to separate colours in a painting, focusing on some minutiae that only she could see. Whatever it was, real or not, she seemed satisfied with what she had observed after a few moments. She turned like the magicians weren't there and shot a glance across the room, at the body of Nesariyah's father.

"Good enough," she murmured.

"What?" the leader of the magicians scowled.

"I don't know what you—" his head burst apart like over-ripe fruit struck by a club, and before the blood and brain matter had even finished settling on their uniforms his two companions were hit by the girl's subsequent magic missiles and their whole bodies just came apart. The girl looked at them fall, then with a few mental nudges sent tendrils of force repositioning the gore and corpses. It took her only a few moments. Then she spoke to Nesariyah.

"If anyone asks, you saw your father kill them before dying from his wounds." It was a command, and Nesariyah could do nothing but nod dully as she received it. The girl seemed satisfied. Nesariyah felt suddenly sure she would have killed her with a gesture if she were not.

"Good. Then continue working."

"Won't…" Nesariyah was an idiot, she just couldn't stop herself.

"Won't those soldiers all confirm that you were here when the magicians died?"

"They will confirm that I was in the temple before these magicians died, and when asked about that I will explain that I had been waiting for backup before heading deeper." Nesariyah realised the repositioning and what it had been for then, and felt a whole new kind of fear for the girl before her. She'd been taking casual steps to make her enemies' deaths look like battle casualties even as she made up her mind about even killing them. Were all the apprentices of Garamon like this? No, definitely not.

There would not be a single free city in Estalia if they were. Soon enough they were forced out of the temple by circumstances rather than people. They ran out of boxes. Nesariyah was pleased, and noticed the girl was even more pleased, to find that they had easily fit the majority of magical tomes before doing so, but her heart broke for the other books left behind as they went. Histories and fictions both. Pieces of culture and life. The memory of a people she could hear being slaughtered even now.

Would everyone in this city die? Was this the night Orapathaqi's population was erased? If so, it would only truly be gone when those histories were. The girl walked briskly, not needing to struggle with the weight of her laden boxes simply due to them levitating after her with a thought. Nesariyah could feel the magic at work, and knew the spell matrix being used was oddly complex. Anything more than that would be past her senses without a more detailed observation.

And there was certainly neither time, nor opportunity for that. Not right now. The city still burned around them, after all. Every step was a struggle for her as her legs seemed to shake more by the moment, and Nesariyah found herself whipping her head around one way and the other as she went, desperate not to be caught unawares by the barbarians loose upon Orapathaqi.

"Relax," the girl told her without looking. Nesariyah felt a chill run down her spine again.

"What if we're attacked?" she croaked.

"We might be. It will be fine." There was such certainty that it actually abated her fear for a moment. Then they passed Djeserun's shop. Djeserun. Nesariyah had known him since she was a little girl. He'd always smiled when she passed by, and though it had been discouraged for a child of the priesthood to intermix with a man of the common labourers.

He'd always seemed happy, no matter what was going on, and sitting out by his shop, eating and watching the people walk through the street beside it, she'd never felt like anything could go wrong. But that had just been an illusion. The shop was burned now and Nesariyah saw Djeserun lying strewn across its open counter, his face contorted into a terrified mirror of his wide smile. There were so many wounds on him that she couldn't tell which had been the killing stroke.

Nesariyah stopped, felt her hands raise and drift towards him. She wanted to do something, to help him somehow. She couldn't. A burial, perhaps. It was the least he—"You are delaying me, hurry up," the Garamon girl snapped. Nesariyah followed without another moment's thought. —deserved. But Djeserun never got the least he deserved. They were interrupted once more on their way, a squad of soldiers just rushing at them whooping and laughing like men on the hunt.

Nesariyah saw it all end before she could even register a feeling about it, a brief flash of light and then several mangled men collapsing to the ground. The Garamon girl did not even break stride after her death-spell, and Nesariyah saw utter contempt in her eyes where she caught them aimed at the fresh corpses. Minutes after that, they were reaching a building Nesariyah had seen before but never entered.

She assumed, at first, that it was some temporary base for the magicians of Garamon, but found that was not the case as she followed the girl in. Thick walls of heavy stone that must have been built by a priest's efforts for how smoothly cut they were, echoes snatching up her footsteps and throwing them far ahead. The interior was dark, though lit up in a moment with just a gesture from the Garamon girl. Nesariyah was pleasantly surprised to find no corpses or gore within.

"I had a suspicion this building would be abandoned. It looks to be some sort of old storehouse, is that correct?" she asked. Nesariyah took a moment to reply, the answer only slowly sinking through her stunned brain.

"I think so, yes. That… sounds right." Meat stores, she had to guess. The walls were oddly cool and the whole chamber inside felt oddly sterile. Magical effects killing the strange substances that ate into dead animals when left to their own devices. That, and the thickness of it all. Serpopards would smash their way through anything less than feet-thick stone with only the mildest exertion, and be tearing into the food within long before warriors and priests could arrive to drive them away.

This realization was what let Nesariyah understand why the Garamon girl had taken her here.

"You're hunkering down here for the night?" she asked.

"Until the madness around us dies down," the girl confirmed.

"However long that takes. I want you to stay by my side." Confusion and fear hit Nesariyah like a punch to the gut. She took a step back.

"Why?" There were more stories of Garamon depravity than she could count, and even now she thought she could hear the lustful atrocity being carried out on Orapathaqi's women. This girl hadn't looked at her like that, but she may just have had a still face. But even now, she didn't seem to even notice Nesariyah's body.

"Because you are magically ingenious," she said. Nesariyah waited for more, but it didn't come. Instead she saw primordial water, that stuff of magic the Garamon savages called aether, begin to bubble up and crust over the entrance behind them. In moments they were sealed in, and despite being alone with a stranger she had already seen kill over half a dozen people, Nesariyah felt safer than she had all night.