Chương 91: Chapter 82.5 - Expanding Horizons

++Orapathaqi being as far as it was from Garamon meant that a great many social rules were suddenly more… flexible. ++ - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, 'The Great Lich'. 1, 891 A. E. The Winzorth Institute encouraged a great deal of study, but I had never been able to fully enjoy it. The knowledge was good, the improving power was excellent, but there was always that note of artifice that spoiled the rest. That irritating reminder that I was not learning on my own terms.

Teachers oversaw my efforts and carefully guided me, fellow students leered at every step I took on the road to excellence. It was far too social for my liking. And it had been the only major source of power I had at my disposal. Brief reprieves in my dungeon laboratory notwithstanding, there had simply been no better way for me to grow in power and mastery, and so there had been no choice but for me to follow that road. Now I had a better choice.

A much better choice, because if there were no high priests of Orapathaqi to guide me along the formalised system of their arts, I still had their wisdom laid out before me in the form of books. And a consultant in the form of my new servant, who, reluctant as she was to share her people's secrets, seemed even more reluctant to draw the ire of her new captor.

So for the next few weeks, I settled into Orapathaqi, continued growing used to the army's new job garrisoning the city, and made myself comfortable as I consumed the ancient knowledge wherever I found it. Even for my lich's intellect, it was taking a lot of time to get through the sheer volume of everything. And that was to say nothing of the more practical act of actually using this magic to try and raise my own abilities.

It was arduous and difficult and tedious, with an endless number of false-starts and promising dead-ends. And I loved every moment of it. This was magic at its purest, not the sterile consumption of other people's findings; the acquisition of power at any cost and any effort. The Estalians of Orapathaqi had been practicing a fascinating philosophy on the nature of death and the corpus for millennia, and this took up the bulk of my studies.

As Nesariyah had said, its chief tenet was the idea of the physical corpse and its spiritual effects upon the arcane substance. Totally at odds with all things Garamon, and with the spiritual beliefs of my own tribe growing up. They tended to prefer the notion that death meant a total separation of body and soul. Perhaps they were right, but then again I had seen the reanimates of Ancient Estalia with my own eyes, and that was enough to convince me their methods were worth examining. It all came down to the organs.

Each one held significance over a certain part of the spirit, and each one needed to be isolated from the body, removed and preserved external to it, to leave that spirit closer to total incorruptibility in death. This was only the start of it, however. Because the vessels in which these organs were stored had their own significance too. Ornamented, magical seals of deep enchanting.

Estalia, or at least Orapathaqi, did not possess the deep and practiced mastery over enchantment that modern Garamon did, but it was still powerful enough to trap those pieces of vital substance that were sectioned off from the rest within their organs. From there, the changes would follow slowly but surely over long years. Unfortunately, this meant that if I wanted practical inspiration for my learning, the sort that my unique ability to perceive magic actually benefitted from…

I would need to acquire one of these vessels myself. My new servant had generally been docile and disengaged from me up until then, avoiding eye contact and speaking only when spoken to. Fear had a way of leaving the most strong-willed of people entirely absent from themselves. That changed, to my pleasant surprise, when I broached the topic of these vessels and where I might acquire one.

"You can't!" she snapped, all worries about her situation and my potential wrath seemingly forgotten.

"That would be a violation of the most severe order, to disturb the rejuvenating dead is…I can't even describe it, it would be inhuman." Not inhumane, inhuman. Being called an animal was actually a new one for me, and I was so surprised by the novelty that I forgot to be angry at the insult.

"What is so disturbing about it?" I asked. I did not actually care, in truth, but I reasoned that expressing what seemed to be interest in the moral teachings behind this field of magic would be my best way to get some useful answers. I had reasoned correctly, because though Nesariyah's temper was quickly giving way to yet more fear, she still replied.

"It's a person's only way of guaranteeing their spirit remains intact in the next life. We can't treat every corpse properly, but the ones that are fully entombed…they must never be disturbed." If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"What happens if they are disturbed?" I asked.

"Pain. Worse pain than a human body could possibly feel, everything good about the ritual would become bad and they'd be driven mad by the torment. Their spirit would try to return to a body no longer fit for it, and they'd rise again as an unbound undead of astonishing power. You must understand, almost everyone who receives the highest-grade of burial is a high priest or king. Powerful men in life, made even more so by the preservation." Even I winced at that.

These preservative rituals of Ancient Estalia seemed to, at their very highest level, actually produce a result similar to lichdom. The thought of bringing an unbound, maddened lich into the world for the sake of my experiments made even me pause. In my current state at least. There went my plans for grave-robbing as a research shortcut.

"Do you know how to perform this ritual?" I asked Nesariyah, deciding to change approaches. If I could learn to perform it myself, I could do so on a suitably untalented target as to leave whatever enraged undead came back too weak to threaten me. But my new servant was suddenly reluctant and stiff, perhaps realising where my intentions were heading.

"I cannot pass that knowledge on," she told me.

"Why?" I challenged her, deciding to hold back my temper for now. Besides, it was enjoyable just to watch her squirm.

"What you're asking me is sacred, it's not something anyone outside the priesthood can be trusted with."

"The priesthood of Orapathaqi is gone," I reminded her.

"What you are suggesting is limiting the spread of their knowledge. Do you want it to die out?" If there was one thing I could thank my mother for, it was teaching me how to get what I wanted with a defter touch than I had once relied on in my previous life. That I was relying on that deftness now, with my own servant, was only a little humiliating. And if I could thank my father for one thing, it was a tolerance for humiliation.

"I…maybe," Nesariyah's eyes cut through me then and I had to admire the hatred I saw.

"Yes, maybe I do. Maybe I want this knowledge to die out rather than see it used by the people who burned my city and killed my father." I weighed that, and considered very carefully how much I should share with the girl. She was certainly promising as a future subordinate, provided she was molded in the right way. She was also promising as a future obstacle.

"If you will recall, it was the larger army I arrived with who wanted to see this knowledge destroyed," I reminded her." I saved it. And I want to preserve it now. If you would rather give the wider army its wish and see it die out, then that is your choice." It was not actually her choice, if she denied me now I was fully willing to resort to all manners of interrogation to get the information I needed, but I thought things would go more easily if she volunteered it. And I could see her come round now.

"... Fine," she agreed at last.

"Fine. But I don't know everything, my teachings were never complete and… women are not permitted to learn the final Spell of The Dead." I felt the sudden urge to go outside and start blowing apart buildings. Would this world's ridiculous fixation on gender ever stop inconveniencing me? However limited her knowledge, Nesariyah's direction saved me a lot of time and brought me that much closer to mastering the principles of the Spell of the Dead.

What more I was lacking, I could only try to piece together from reading the metaphysical rather than magical texts I had pilfered. For a few more days, this project went easily enough. My only real obstacle to it were the repeated visits from Bagran. He seemed to have grown a good deal more persistent in pursuing me after the siege, and was as impervious to being told no as ever. It was only one of his visits that actually demanded my attention, however.

This one beginning as he entered directly into my living room via the balcony, picking the lock with a brief flick of magic and drifting into the chamber smirking as he went.

"Lovely day, isn't it, my future bride?" he asked. I suspect he had been hoping to surprise me, but I had already detected his magic before he entered.

"It is hotter today than it was for the last week, and our skin burns under heavy exposure to sunlight," I pointed out. Another irritation of my new body. My first life had bequeathed me with skin darker than the Grandmaster's, which was far more tolerant to weather of the sort Estalia boasted. My bare bones had been more tolerant still. Now I would redden like a lobster within the hour. Bagran was almost as pale as me, but he just laughed at that.

"You should let me teach you my family's radiation filter sometime," he grinned.

"It'll render the sun harmless, as well as all sorts of other things."

"No. Go away and climb back down, leave me alone."

"Climb?!" he laughed, ignoring my instruction outright.

"Why would I do that when I could just levitate my way up here?" I paused at that.

"You can do that?" His grin could not have widened more, even if there had been a person tugging on each corner of his mouth with all of their strength.

"Oh yes, another secret of the Voret family. Something else to look forward to when you marry me." I, for once, was sadly forced not to insult the idiot once more, because now he had something I actually wanted.

"Show me," I told him. He chuckled, and did so. The mana weaving around him was…obfuscated. Infuriatingly so, I could not tell how it was being formed or what it was doing, some deliberate effort to disguise it that foiled even my senses.

"Trying to get a feel for how it's done?" the boy asked.

"I daresay even you won't be able to."

"Shut up," I snapped.

"I could teach you, you know," he suggested.

"If you…you know, marry me. Like you should have from the start." I snorted at that.

"I do not want to fly that much," I told him bluntly. This time his smile shivered, then fell.

"You don't need to be such a bitch, you know," he snapped.

"Playing hard to get is one thing, but this is quite another."

"I am not playing," I told him.

"You are repulsive and I would sooner couple with a decomposing Estalian reanimate than you." His face could not have burned a brighter shade of red if someone had squeezed all the blood from elsewhere in his body. I swore I saw him vibrate with anger.

"Fucking whore," he snarled, turning and flinging himself over my balcony. I did not look to see him catch his fall. If he failed and died, it would be a pleasant surprise later.

"Men like that can be dangerous, you know," Nesariyah told me from one corner. I turned to see her staring at the balcony, looking worried. Then again she looked worried making breakfast in the morning so I was not terribly concerned by the fact.

"I can handle an idiot like that," I told her dismissively. Truth be told I was irritated to have been distracted from my work even this much.