Chương 88: Chapter 80 - The Rewards of Excellence

++Estalia was an appropriate place for me to begin striving for true independence; power held separately from the institutions of Garamon and my family. This, like all things truly worth possessing, was hard to come by. ++ - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, 'The Great Lich'. 1, 891 A. E. The night was long and terrifying. Every sound that came too close to the warehouse left Nesariyah certain she was living through her final hours, but not once did the Garamon girl even flinch.

She simply sat there and continued reading. No pauses, no distraction. Her eyes flicked over the page near-inhumanly quick and the time she took to finish any one section was so small that Nesariyah could scarcely read a page's number before she had turned it. There had to be over two hundred books piled up in the warehouse with them, each storing knowledge laid out in tens, even hundreds of thousands of words.

Nesariyah finally succumbed to exhaustion and fell asleep while she continued, and by the time she awoke, shortly after dawn, the pile of finished tomes beside her captor had grown to over a dozen.

"This is fascinating stuff," the girl told her.

"Especially these parts about corpse preservation. Your people are obsessed with it, are you not? With reading a body to ensure its spirit is well cared for in the afterlife." Nesariyah bristled.

"It's not an obsession," she replied curtly.

"It's the proper way of things. Your people are…" she trailed off, realising two things at once. She was getting snippy with a girl who held her fate in one uncaring hand…and that girl's grasp of Estalian was far better than it had been a few hours ago.

"You were pretending to speak less fluently than you actually could?"

"Hm?" the girl did not look up.

"Oh, no. Reading has let me practice your language somewhat more." She sounded almost native in her speech, heavily accented but grammatically flawless. She couldn't possibly be telling the truth, surely. Nesariyah didn't know how to even respond to that. She was, fortunately, saved the trouble. The girl began to stand, gently moving the books down beside her, then frowning at them.

"I will need to safeguard these somewhere during the day, but I cannot bring them with me for the time being for… personal reasons." Nesariyah saw her thinking for only a brief moment. Then the books were all back in the first box, and a dome of aether spread over to cover them. Before she could ask what was happening the girl flexed a hand and sent a magic missile hurtling into the ceiling, collapsing chunks of stone and debris over the dome.

Nesariyah was on her feet yelling before a conscious thought could even register.

"What are you doing?!" she roared.

"Calm down," the girl told her icily.

"They are undamaged. I would never harm such treasures. The aether will shield them for a good twelve hours before it dissolves, and by the time that begins to happen I intend to be back here already to rescue them." Nesariyah calmed, but only a little. She hadn't realised until now how precious these tomes had become. Some of the last pieces of Orapathaqi's priesthood, condensed into such a thoroughly destructible form. It was like having her own heart resting outside her body and exposed to the world.

"Where…where are you taking me then?" she asked the girl. The girl's face did not move, but Nesariyah thought she sensed discontent in her.

"You will see shortly." Nesariyah did, but not before getting a good look at Orapathaqi by day. She felt her bile rising as the two of them walked through the city's streets and past all the savagery of the night before. Windows smashed in, bodies strewn about. She saw more than one woman simply seated on the ground staring ahead at nothing, and could not help but imagine what horrors they were remembering to inspire such a response.

"What will happen to the city?" she asked the girl as they moved. Nesariyah couldn't imagine things ever being good again, not with monsters like this ruling Orapathaqi.

"I do not know," the Garamon girl replied. She sounded bored. Their destination became clear enough soon. There was a large, open section to the southern corner of Orapathaqi that had once been used for sporting events. Nesariyah found it now surrounded by soldiers, which the girl seemed pleased by.

"I thought he would be here. Demigods tend to have a theatrical spark." Demigods? The blood cooled to frosted sludge in Nesariyah's veins. She'd heard stories of the beings that ruled Garamon, but she had never seen one. She'd been told they were involved in this very siege and yet, minus the distant sight of the northern wall being smashed inwards, she hadn't laid eyes on them. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

Now it seemed that she would, and that thought was more terrifying to her than any army could be. It was almost a relief when they were stopped from advancing into the grounds beyond.

"Halt," a soldier growled out in the tongue of Garamon.

"What business have you here?"

"Isabel Vornholt," the girl told him quickly.

"I am here to present spoils of war to the Demigod Nu'chista, as well as arrange my accommodations in the city following my performance in the siege." The soldier's face tightened with disgust instantly, but the girl did not seem to notice. Nesariyah had heard of this. Garamon, bizarrely, was led by people who disliked their own caster class. Far from venerated as the religious leaders and scholars they were in Estalia, the magicians of Garamon were seen as rivals—even enemies—to the nobility.

Apparently this man, with his plumed hat, was among that nobility. Nesariyah was surprised to hear his accent sound so similar to the girl's.

"You will have to wait then," he told her at once.

"His Divinity is busy gathering sacrifices at the moment, and is not seeing anyone yet."

"Very well then, I shall wait within the sporting grounds until he is finished," the girl replied. The soldier bristled.

"That will not be necessary—" —"nonetheless, it will be happening. I am fully in my right to demand seating while I wait, and I can see others there already. Now get out of my way." The man's loathing was almost a tangible force in the air, and Nesariyah thought for a moment that he might move to strike the girl. He did not make that fatal mistake however, simply grumbled and stepped aside to permit them passage. The seating area of the sporting grounds was not full, and it felt strange for Nesariyah to see it.

Strange to see it so scarcely occupied, and stranger still for those occupants to be foreigners. She was still yet to witness the greatest bizarrity however. When she finally took her seat and looked out into the grounds themselves, there awaited a towering monstrosity of a man who seemed to take up half her vision even from hundreds of feet away. Lined up ahead of him were, she recognised, captive priests, bound and shackled and beaten, but all alive and all conscious.

Some squirmed to try and free themselves, some seemed too hold still with patience, some still with hopelessness.. One by one they were freed by the blue-skinned giant and given room to weave magic and cast spells. One by one they fought him, throwing their power at the Demigod with the desperation unique to cornered men. One by one they died, none managing to so much as singe their enemy's eyebrow and all torn apart with contemptuous ease.

She did not even see the creature move, it simply seemed to disappear from one place and simultaneously appear in another.

"How many of those are with the army?" Nesariyah asked the Garamon girl.

"Two," she replied.

"This is the more powerful of them." She was watching the Demigod too, watching with a look altogether different from what Nesariyah was seeing on the people around them. Most of them had awe or something close to worship on their faces. But this girl had the expression Nesariyah had come to expect from big-game hunters and mountain climbers.

"We never had a chance," she murmured.

"Did we? We couldn't have even come close to fighting you all off."

"No, you could not have," the girl agreed. The fighting and defeat of Orapathaqi's caster-priests was far from the worst of it all. What truly struck Nesariyah, what left her near-convulsing with deep and painful disgust, was what came after. When each man was beaten and unable to resist any longer, the towering Demigod would hoist him up with one hand, reach out for his chest with the other and clumsily tear out his heart.

Each man was forced to watch his heart eaten before his very eyes as the last of his life faded, then the empty corpses were tossed aside as contemptuously as stinking garbage. The Demigod didn't even pause before moving onto his next victim each time.

"They're unkillable," Nesariyah croaked. There had been high priests among the dead men, and none of them had even inconvenienced the Demigod.

"Many think that," the girl murmured beside her. Before Nesariyah could ask what she meant, she had already stood and started making her way down the seating area and into the sports grounds. Nesariyah didn't know what to do apart from hurry after. That and look back to see the nasty stares being directed her way. The Demigod turned as they approached and arched an eyebrow at them, seeming more confused than angry. That was a relief.

"You…Vornholt, yes? Agrian Vornholt's sister." His voice sounded like a rumbling volcano, and every word sent shivers down Nesariyah's spine. The girl bore it all without even blinking, like she'd seen it a thousand times already.

"That is right, your Divinity. I am here to discuss my spoils of war and accommodations with you. I apologize if I am intruding." The Demigod didn't seem to be in a good mood, though his irritation wasn't turning into violence just yet.

"You didn't make an appointment?" he asked.

"It was quite time-sensitive," the girl explained. She sounded at once fully apologetic and totally unsorry.

"I see." The Demigod, again, did not seem to move. He was simply standing before them, one hand held out and the fingers just shy of closing on the girl's head. All in an instant.

"Then make an appointment, and I will decide how time-sensitive your petty little human problems are for myself." The girl, apparently named Vornholt, met the Demigod's eyes and shied away from them, nodding with a sudden tremble. Nesariyah suspected it was all deception on her part, something about this girl made the thought of her being genuinely scared seem impossible. But the Demigod seemed to buy it, and he drew his hand back after a moment, apparently satisfied.

"You did well," he grunted after a moment.

"I read the report just an hour ago. Do you know how many you killed?"

"It was impossible to count," the girl replied.

"But I slew eight caster-priests, that I know of." The Demigod nodded.

"Nine in all. Plus at least a few dozen warriors of the first order, maybe a few of the second. And close to a hundred normal soldiers. You did more to advance this siege than any two of your compatriots. I do not like you, Isabel Vornholt. I think you're an upstart and a whore and I think you have no respect for the natural way of things…but I like your results a lot, and I believe in handing out rewards when they are owed. So what do you want?"

"I need space and security," the girl said quickly.

"Several bedrooms, ideally, and open rooms around them to set up a workstation."

"You think we're going to be here for long enough to do that?" the Demigod asked her.

"I think this is the staging ground for a larger offensive into Estalia, designed to capture the leylines and other natural mana fountains within the nation. So yes," the girl replied. The Demigod smiled, Nesariyah thought, but not for more than a moment.

"Done," he told her.

"Anything else?"

"Yes. The matter concerns this woman, I assume you would like to claim her as a sacrifice given her power?"