Chương 171: Book 3 Chapter 29: One Against Another

++As I near the transition from life to enduring death, I feel myself racked by anticipation. My body is aging now, though still far from past its prime. What will it feel like to abandon this for an immortal form? What might I achieve with a Vessel that can go on to accumulate strength forever? ++ - Fragment of Lord Dread's archives, date indeterminate. It took only a few hours for us both to replenish our mana.

I passed the time by practicing my powers as Isabel Vornholt, certain that the ambient energy of my laboratory would obfuscate them. Sethira did likewise. When the time was finally up, both of us stood with some measure of tension and built our strength almost reluctantly.

"Ready?" I asked.

"Of course," she nodded. Two ancient liches congealed into being in the same instant, and the room wailed around us. We struck the door from its hinges and began making our way through the laboratory. This time, with its interior changed again, I was guided by instinct as much as memory. The place seemed to have reacted to my return by starting to reconfigure again. That was worse for us than it was for the chimera; I, after all, already knew each and every previous turn of the structure, having built it myself.

Now that knowledge was useless. The size of the laboratory was one advantage however, and we went several minutes before encountering any kind of obstacles. After those minutes were up, a set of semi-solid dregs oozed down from a crack in one wall to stand before us. They were all powerful enough that a Highmage squad would be needed to dispatch even a single one of them, but posed no trouble to myself and Sakhent. Several more encounters like that emerged, and each one was pushed past with a similar ease.

It seemed the chimera was an outlier, even after ten thousand years. I truly did wish I could study it, but my other works in Poloira demanded me back too soon. As if it had heard my wishes, the chimera soon located Sakhent and myself, and a new chase began. This one was not nearly so long as the first. We came to within sight of our exit, but remained easily a thousand paces shy.

The corridor around us was tight and cramped, as so much of my laboratory had become since I last returned here, and the chimera gained dangerously quick. We began making efforts to halt it. Magical landmines that detonated with the force of entire storehouses of dynamite, or patches of scorching heat that would vaporize a human being before they even felt the pain of contact. Nothing slowed it. It was unrelenting. It was on course to intercept us before we left.

But Sakhent and myself had considered this outcome ahead of time, and we had another plan prepared. If it failed, it would be a bigger disaster than the chimera. If it succeeded, we could potentially kill two birds with one stone. Putting our powers together, we tore a rent in the world and into a realm beyond.

My laboratory was warded from the outside against such things, though my own power was able to bypass these protections, and I could call on so much mana that the gateway I produced would have accommodated an army. Indeed, it was accommodating an army. A vast, glowing, humming one marching through in unified dignity and constrained killing power. The fae at war will always be a sight to behold.

My mana reserves had fallen by more than half with the effort og calling these ones forth, I imagined Sakhent had depleted his own by even more, but the results could not be argued with. In an instant the fae warriors emerging, all of them tall and noble in silvery armour and moving with whipstrike-speed, set eyes on the chimera and fell upon it. I saw enchanted steel rise and fall in grizzly stabbing motions, hand-hooks sink into flesh and tear free chunks, blood drizzle and skin tear away.

The chimera killed many. Each blow was death for one or even several of the fae, their magical armour crumpling like thin foil, but for each that died two more closed in to continue the assault. Blood was actually pooling out to cover the floor beneath their whole battleground by the time the chimera finally stopped healing. Then they set its corpse alight with arcane fire as white as anything in nature. I resigned myself to the fact that I would probably not be able to study this strange mutant after all.

Oh well, at least I still had a Demigod. My concerns stopped being academic within mere moments as the fae turned on me, their cool eyes all falling to rest on Sakhent and myself. The tension around us was beyond palpable, it actually seemed to have taken on a physical mass of its own. From among the fae, I studied one particular figure that stood taller than the rest. As tall as me, in fact. Female of course, with a halo of circling ice crystals and eyes that appeared as two deep, empty pits.

She stepped forwards to speak before I could.

"We know you, lich. You have been a dead thing for almost as long as your kind have wielded fire. Today, you will abandon your mockery of life and lie still with the rest." Sakhent shot me a look, or rather his faceless head turned slightly towards me in a way that gave me the impression of considerable surprise. I supposed he did not know quite how old I actually was.

"I SUMMONED YOU HERE TO BARGAIN, FAE," I replied. I had to admit to some semblance of nerves now. I had summoned the fae, but I had not bound them. Sending them back with but a single spell was now beyond me, and if things turned into a fight, even with their numbers so diminished by slaying the chimera, I could not be sure of victory. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. But they could not be sure either.

I had counted two hundred elder warriors stepping through their portal, now perhaps ten dozen remained. With myself and Sakhent combined they would, if nothing else, have a difficult and painful fight on their hands. That was probably the only reason their leader paused as long as she did.

"We have nothing to discuss with the long-dead," she said. Which was, itself, the beginning of a discussion. I decided not to be smug and point that out, it would be more productive to just use the chance.

"I THINK YOU DO. I THINK YOU AND I HAVE A COMMON ENEMY IN THE FORM OF THE GODS OF GARAMON." Sakhent stepped forwards now, speaking with a voice just as booming as my own.

"AND YOU WOULD NOT BE ALONE IN THE ALLIANCE FORMING TO BEST THEM," he declared.

"I AM SAKHENT THE IMMORTAL, KING OF ORAPATHAQI AND MASTER OF ESTALIA. I AM THE CUSTODIAN OF THE NATURAL WORLD AND TAMER OF THE DEPTHS. AND I, TOO, AM WORKING TO THIS CAUSE." Apparently, whatever I had done over the years to offend the fae with my very existence, they were more liberal about Sakhent's. I saw the lead faerie—surely some queen of their court—bristle, but look thoughtful at the tirade. She took her time in answering.

"What would this alliance entail?"

"DESTRUCTION," I replied.

"COMPLETE AND TOTAL DESTRUCTION OF GARAMON'S GODS, EXTERMINATION OF THEIR DEMIGODS, ERADICATION OF ALL TRACE OF THEM." I caught murmurs from among the other fae as soldiers flitted glances towards each other. I was surprised by how reluctant that notion seemed to make them, and soon received an answer as to why.

"What you are suggesting would be a violation of the natural order," the Queen told me. I was cut off in answering by Sakhent speaking first.

"A VIOLATION? THE VIOLATION IS THEIR CONTINUED EXISTENCE. THEIR LEACHEROUS GREED, SCRAPING THROUGH MY COUNTRY AND MY PEOPLE, DESTROYING CULTURES AND PILFERING OUR TREASURES, DANCING ON THE GRAVES OF OUR OWN GODS AND HISTORIES AS THEY CACKLE AWAY LIKE THE RACE OF GIGGLING MORONS THEY ARE. THE VIOLATION IS THEIR BURNING OF BODIES AND HANGING OF THOSE WHO SEEK TO HANDLE THEM WITH CARE. DO NOT SPEAK TO ME OF VIOLATING NATURE, FAERIE. I SPENT MILLENNIA GUARDING IT."

I had not really considered the usefulness of having Sakhent present for this negotiation when I had decided to make the fae my plan B for dealing with that chimera. Hearing him speak now, I realised that his chances of persuading them by being genuine were better than mine had ever been of persuading them with lies and false promises.

"You would have us ally with this…thing?" the Queen asked as she turned her gaze to me. The disgust was palpable. I was used to it of course, but what struck me now was the confusion as to why I was receiving this treatment while Sakhent was not.

"YOU SEEM TO BE UNAWARE OF SOME RECENT CHANGES BOTH I AND LORD DEAD HAVE UNDERGONE," he replied. Faerie Queens are more than just pathologically arrogant. In the same way a God is ontologically limited to thoughts and sentiments that function within their sphere of domain, so too is a Queen of the Fae essentially unable to even consider the idea that they may be mistaken, or wrong, or imperfect in any way at all. So it is quite a feat to have one express visible surprise.

"What are you talking about?" she demanded, fury turning her voice into a quivering blade of sound. Faeries do not like being ignorant. Sakhent hesitated a moment, then his magic weakened and receded, and seconds later I was standing next to Sethira.

"Neither of us is solely a lich any longer," she told the faerie.

"We have become something more." All eyes turned to me as Sethira resumed her previous form. I hesitated. If the faeries wished to attack, they would find no greater opportunity than when I stood as Isabel Vornholt. With me dispatched they would find it trivial to kill Sakhent alone. If I refused, and we fought as two liches against them all, then our odds of victory were probably equal to our enemies'. But now I saw an opportunity larger than just surviving the day.

This was a chance to get the faeries involved in my and Sakhent's alliance. I considered, and I decided without hesitating. I would not overthrow the Gods with self-doubt. Lord Dread receded and Isabel Vornholt stood alive and defiant, meeting the faerie queen's eyes.

"Here I am," I told her.

"Human and living, as you can see. Now tell me I am a dead thing still." It seemed she could not, though she certainly did not ease up with the revelation either. The faeries turned to one another and began speaking in their own language. My long millennia have allowed me to learn almost every human dialect that has ever existed, from the invention of sharpened bronze to the widespread use of telegrams, but the speech of the fae remained one secret that I had yet to steal.

Still, I committed the syllables and sounds I heard now to memory. If I listened to enough then one day I would be able to piece the language together independently anyway. They finished their discourse before I could do that now, naturally. The Queen turned back to me and Sakhent.

She did not look any less certain than she ever had, I did not believe it was possible for a faerie Queen to look anything less than totally sure of herself, but I got the impression that the conversation was at least about to get easier.

"We will consider your offer," she said at last.

"For the time being, do not call on our people again. Not to bind us, not to negotiate with us, and certainly not to thrust us upon such a foe."

"You would not have had this fight if you had not wished to take the chance to kill me," I pointed out.

"Do not summon us again," the Queen repeated. She and all her subordinates made their way back through the portal and left me alone in the hall. I saw the chimera as it lay there, flesh bubbling and…yes, piecing itself back together even now. Well, I suppose I have a few minutes to spare to imprison another subject in my pocket realm.