Chương 94: Chapter 84.5 - Improvised Arcane Device

++You get more with a dash of science and a magical spell than you do with just a magical spell. ++ - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, 'The Great Lich'. 1, 891 A. E. I was starting to get very, deeply annoyed by how many things kept insisting on attacking me or my subordinates while I attempted to go about doing my research.

It was bad enough that this infernal body of mine needed so much sleep, that I was already feeling the effects of that need for sleep now, but now my idiot brother had gone and caused me this much more work right when I was on the brink of saving yet another chunk of precious Estalian knowledge from the demented apemen of Garamon. Reaching into my pocket, I took another snort of my stimulant and felt it shoot fire through my veins. That would, if nothing else, keep me from collapsing while I saw to this idiocy.

My first obstacle was in finding Agrian. I was able to reach the site of his disappearance easily enough, but when I came to it I found, of course, nothing. Save for a few mangled corpses, both Garamon and native, that told me little. Save that there would be undead present, based on the advanced decay in some of them. But that was not Agrian's location, and I needed that soon.

That my brother's corpse was not here told me he had most likely been taken alive, or else his murderers had seen fit to cart away only his body and none of the others. I could not guess why that might be save for them intending to mummify him. An unpleasant thought, that eventuality would throw an incalculable wrench in my plans. I dismissed it and focused on what I knew I could control; my search for clues. Magic dissipated fast after use.

The more intense the magic, the longer it would last overall, but power increase always led to diminishing returns in how long its traces would linger. It was, I had gathered with my modern education, similar to the laws dictating that a hotter object would output vastly higher amounts of radiation. That did not mean that every trace was gone, however. In fact there was quite a lot of residual mana lingering here. What irked me was the total lack of active mana leading away from the site.

Apparently whoever had Agrian was not using much magic as they moved, probably having secured him through mundane means. Following the trace amounts that were produced by the mere bodies of magicians at rest was an inhumanly difficult task. It was fortunate for Agrian, then, that he was being followed by Lord Dread. My eyes widened and caught the mana as thin strands in the air, I chased without wasting time. Unfortunately, I could not move at full speed. At my real speed. My magical speed.

As easy as it would have been to make a sled and propel myself along, even adjusting it to work in this cramped, urban environment, magic like that would be felt by an especially skilled practitioner at dozens of paces, at worst. Perhaps hundreds if they were especially potent or attentive.

I did not think Agrian had been taken by something far beyond my power, by the looks of things there had been some sort of fight at least, but I was not about to risk the element of surprise when I did not know for sure how capable they were. For a moment I cursed the fact that I had not exercised my body in some time, but the long hours of recent study had not robbed me of too much strength. My long legs ate up the ground and, though my lungs were soon burning, I turned my iron will to ignoring the pain.

Physical discomfort was nothing compared to the trials I had already waded through to get where I was, after all. And if I was to save Agrian, I would need to complete yet another trial when I finally reached whoever had taken him. Fortunately, that was not looking like it would take too long. The trail grew stronger almost by the stride, a sure indicator that I was drawing closer to the source.

That source was, I thought, still moving, which told me that my enemy had not yet brought Agrian—or Agrian's corpse—to wherever they wanted to. Good for me, in the way that any enemy's plan not yet being a success was good for me. If I could have gleaned more information from these facts then it would have been even better. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

As things were, the chase approaching its end only left me anticipating the fight that would follow it. A warehouse followed it first, and I circled the building twice before fully confirming it was where the trail ended. Something about it threw off even my magical senses and sight, a distortion to the ambient mana.

Not just blockage, which would have been easily identified through simply looking at the absence where unbroken power should have been, but a carefully made disguise placed over it as foreign power worked itself to resemble the normal magic lingering in Orapathaqi around it. Naturally, I took notes and set a mental reminder for myself to practice this technique later. Then I investigated further. The warehouse was not so very big, but it was firmly built.

Almost an identical copy of the one I had selected as my temporary haven during the night I first entered Orapathaqi. Boxy and squat, it was certainly not made to withstand artillery fire, but would suffice at the task in much the same way an iron skillet served as a bludgeon. But there was no battle damage around it. This was, I recognised, a section of Orapathaqi that had not actually seen any fighting, nor much soldierly 'celebration', before now. Garamon's men tended to stay away from it, fearing rebels.

I felt a bit impulsive for some reason, and despite knowing I was deep in enemy territory with no guarantee of reinforcements any time soon, the strongest urge I felt in that moment was to barge into the warehouse with magic flying in all directions killing everything within killing range. I did not, fortunately, just kept pacing around it. The barrier blocking mana from being detectable was the biggest unknown, so I studied it deeper and soon found more information.

Though it was powerful enough to smooth out the noticeable effects of wasted magical energy—those fleeting bits of power shed from any spell that were not directly used in its effects—it did not carry the intensity needed to block stronger, directed magic. That much made sense, a spell that strong and invasive would be utterly obvious to any study. The closest equivalent would probably be a giant sign hanging over the building that read; "Nothing suspicious or illegal is happening in here" in large, red letters.

Even Garamon's army would notice something like that. Probably. I certainly had, and now that I knew how it functioned I could work around it. Because if it wouldn't interfere with active magic and did nothing but keep that magic from being detected, it meant that I no longer had to worry about holding back my powers as I had for the rest of the chase. It would keep the people inside from feeling me, just as it kept me from feeling them.

Binding a thin thread of mana, I worked it into my new and improved listening device and extended it out for the building. I heard humans; walking, standing, breathing, all the little noises that came from idle bodies. But no speech. Inconvenient, as I would have gained a lot more information if my enemies were exchanging it with each other, but I could still make do with just this. I estimated their numbers at somewhere below two dozen.

The numbers of reanimates, lumbering around with clumsy gaits and no breaths, were perhaps double that. It must have been cramped inside the warehouse. Agrian was beyond my ability to detect, though there was one figure at the centre who remained unusually still and breathed far harder than the rest. I mentally compared the sound of its lungs to what I remembered of my brother under duress.

Not a perfect match, any number of conditions can affect how a person sounds in such small ways, but it left me relatively certain I knew where he was. Relatively. What was fortunate for me was that Agrian was also flat against the ground, laying down. Probably kept tied in a heap to prevent him from abruptly running for the exit. In actuality, it was simply preventing him from being in the firing lines provided I kept my initial attack aimed above waist-level. But what that attack was, I still had to decide.

With the amount of magicians present, I knew this was no small thing to attack. I would not have felt confident even with a dozen battlemages aiding me. So I took my time as I prepared to storm it. One of the benefits about my new heights of power was that I could make aether last far longer and remain far stronger. Aether did not produce power on its own, but it could shape and direct it.

I started to work on a great frame not unlike that of a primitive cannon, large and confined with several vents protruding from its sides. From there I filled the interior with water, flowing around a central orb of yet more aether, and began to heat it. The heat built slowly, but with aether insulating the inner chamber from outside air it was all effectively trapped and allowed me to raise the temperature practically without end.

It did not take more than a few moments for hundreds of litres of water to become many times that volume of hissing steam, all still trapped in the central chamber. The block of aether suspended in the middle was still hovering in place, now trapped by the intense pressure of its surrounding gasses rather than floating in liquid. Minutes passed as the heat and pressure grew. Hundreds of degrees, maybe over a thousand.

The steam itself was starting to glow like metal from a forge, cherry-red and dull but unmistakable even in the daylight that filtered through transparent aether. It took minutes more before I was finally satisfied. Then I loaded the vents with dense aether plugs, banished the central piece of aether at the middle of the steam and, as the gas collapsed inwards in a microseconds-long cavitation, unsealed the vents and threw myself down to the ground beneath a shield. The world seemed to fray apart.