Chương 28: Chapter 27: A Proper Man

++There is a trope in fairy tales of the plucky young hero defying the almighty lich. I do not like this trope very much, because it assigns power to righteousness—it assumes that the weak, provided they are on the side of good, will gain the strength to overcome their opposition simply by being good. That is not how it works in real life. If the weak wish to change things, they must first work to become strong.

But that is not to say that I have not seen my fair share of complications from finding a plucky young hero inserted into a situation at just the wrong time. ++ - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, 'The Great Lich'. 1, 891 A. E Agrian tried to sleep, but sleep wouldn't come. He'd had the issue long enough to know that this latest bout of insomnia was going to last for quite some time. First, he'd felt this after the kidnapping.

Those awful, lengthy nights immediately following it were almost worse than the incident itself. They were the ghost of it, the phantom. And no reality could ever match the horror of a little boy's imagination. He wasn't a child anymore though, not really. He was thirteen now, practically a man like father said. And now it was Isabel he found his thoughts haunted by. She did it for herself. He'd not known why, in trying to help him, his sister had completely ignored everything Agrian told her.

It had been the big contradiction. She was so mature and clever, he hadn't understood what could possibly have been keeping her from understanding his needs on such a basic level. Now he knew, the mystery was solved. By her own words; Isabel hadn't been trying to help him at all, had never even cared. She'd thought his trouble reflected badly on her, and so she'd stopped it. End of story. Turning over in his bed, he had to sniff back a few more tears. Agrian was almost a grown man, and men didn't cry.

But men didn't let their little sisters protect them, either, so what was the point in holding anything back? He wept as he lay there, and the weeping just made him feel worse. He'd thought he was on top of the world for so long, it was almost comical. Almost. But there were only so many tears in anyone's body, and he soon ran out. He ran out, and he felt a new feeling taking him over. Agrian had accepted by now that he was a coward, but this latest sensation had him fearing that he was mad too.

He saw Isabel—saw her as if she were standing right in front of him. Saw her surrounded, alone in the dark and staring down something too vast to name. Agrian couldn't have explained what he did next, he just did it. He crawled from his bed and dressed fast, practically throwing his clothes on before scurrying from the room. It was dark and quiet in the corridor, and Agrian risked a dull glow of magical light if only to see by as he scurried along the hall. Where was Isabel?

Right, 'detention', cleaning out the dungeons. Agrian had never been to them, but he'd been told where they were and he made his way there now by memory. Uniquely stressful, that. Somehow he was certain his sister was in danger, and her life was hinging on his recollection of where. Seeing the door he'd been told led down to those dungeons was a moment of hope in an ocean of dread. Seeing that there was a Novice standing outside it only added more dread onto the pile, another obstacle.

The Novices of Winzorth were all dicks, that much Agrian had learned within his first week. Senior apprentices who inevitably got a taste for lording their power over others, and the fact that they had power only over the younger students meant that they acted out on it more rather than less. Pathetically, Agrian almost turned back. The thought of dealing with some teenaged shithead nearly sent him scurrying away. Weak, disgusting, just like Isabel had said.

It was the memory of her contempt that sent him onwards more than anything else. Agrian Vornholt the Younger wasn't a man to be motivated by something as noble as courage or concern, no sir! Nor was he actually as large as a man yet, and so the Novice recognised a student out of bed at ill-hours with a glance.

"The students are still in there?" he asked quickly. Surrounded by darkness, alone. He buried the thought, hysterics would get him nowhere.

"You're not meant to be out of bed," the Novice began with a glare as he walked over to Agrian. The boy wasn't actually taller than him, but looked old enough to have done all his growing already. In Agrian's experience, those who had recently come to terms with being short tended to hate tall youngsters a lot.

"Listen, you need to open that door, the apprentices are in trouble—" Agrian was halfway through speaking when the older boy hit him hard and sent him stumbling. This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Shut up," he spat.

"I've heard of you. Agrian Vornholt, right? Baron Vornholt's brat, here to bail out your sister because the precious princess can't be seen to do work alongside all her peasant schoolmates?" He held a hand up, arcane fire dancing in the palm.

"Well listen here you little shit, I'll not—" —Agrian kicked him as hard as he could in the balls. There was this one, drawn-out moment where both of them just stared at the other, the older boy not quite seeming to realise what happened and Agrian himself not quite believing it. Then the pain came all at once, like a battering ram it seemed. The Novice dropped down to his knees and puked, then kept retching, then puked again. His eyes were watering, and he suddenly didn't look at all like much of a threat.

But Agrian didn't have the luxury of taking chances. He chinned the fucker and watched as his whole body just rocked back, then fell into a groaning heap. Strong, huh. He actually felt his spirits lift a second as he saw the Novice strewn out at his feet.

The chances were that Agrian couldn't have beaten him in a contest of raw magic, Winzorth housed all the world's best arcane prodigies and even a scraggly teenager like this was probably already more powerful than most adult magicians, but there was a certain inevitability to brute force that scholarly types tended to overlook. Thank you, father.

"Sorry," Agrian told the still-conscious Novice as the boy groaned at his feet.

"You were being a dick though." The Novice said nothing in his own defence, perhaps pressed into silence by the guilt of knowing that Agrian was right. He puked again. Maybe not. Either way, Agrian didn't have the time to stand around and explain. He wisped by the Novice and headed straight for the heavy door he'd been standing watch over, and there lay his second problem. It was heavy, and wood, and built in a building filled to the brim with young magicians.

Fragile furniture in the Winzorth Institute inevitably died at the hands of vandals, and countless generations of natural selection had left this door looking sturdy. There was nothing for it though; Agrian paused a moment to gather his power, then threw a magic missile at the wood. He'd really been underselling himself. The magic missile was a simple thing, just a spell matrix woven to hold the force in place and keep it together while it flew far beyond his mana's usual range.

Simplicity didn't mean weakness, though, and Agrian had enough raw power behind his magic that he reckoned twenty strong men throwing punches at the same spot couldn't have matched its impact. The wooden surface certainly couldn't. Agrian shielded his eyes from the explosion of splinters, then looked back to see a satisfying crater in the door. He added a few more with subsequent shots, pacing himself only to make sure he didn't get through into the dungeon with an empty Vessel.

He wouldn't be much good in a fight without magic, however effective his recent sucker-punch had been. The third obstacle reared its ugly head just as he got halfway through the door, however. Suddenly Agrian's magic wasn't penetrating. It was hitting the wood just fine, but fizzling out where it should have punched through. He frowned at that and stared right where he was aiming, watched like he'd catch the mana sneaking away, but it was just the same as before. No explosion of splinters, no deepening hole.

Just nothing, like a candle flame snuffed out by rain. A mystery. But he didn't have time for mysteries, his sister was in danger. Probably. Agrian swore and kicked the door instead. It didn't budge, heavy and vandal-proof as ever. Agrian started swearing and— —"try blasting more of the wood away, it'll make it easier to kick down" came a voice from behind him. He whipped around and saw the Novice standing there, still nursing his groin but looking worried too.

"You believe me now?"

"I believe that there's a dismantling enchantment on that door, and there wasn't one when I closed it. That's advanced magic, I doubt half the teachers in Winzorth could manage one. Something bad is hiding behind that door and any unshielded spell matrix you throw at it will just get pulled apart at the seams."

"How do I shield one to blow through?"

"If I knew that, my suggestion wouldn't involve your fucking boot heel would it?" Agrian would've liked to call the boy a tosser, but he needed all the breath he had. He followed the admittedly good advice for a few more seconds as he thought of what else to do.

"You need to go and get a member of staff, a Professor ideally," he growled, head still angled away from the door to spare his eyes from the flying splinters.

"Right," the Novice wheezed away, sounding very much like someone had tried to reanimate his corpse and enjoyed mixed success. Agrian regretted kicking him quite so hard at that, maybe if he'd pulled his damn punch he'd be expecting help to come back faster. Thanks, dad. Soon enough the door was as mangled as magic was going to make it, seemingly no more than half its original thickness.

That still left it at least two inches deep, and Agrian braced himself for what he knew was about to be a very unpleasant round of kicking. His heel started lashing out, sending impact shocks through his whole lower body and making the door shiver on its hinges. Half as much wood had to be half as hard to break through, right? Or was it four times… Doctor Brown's lessons seemed slippery at the moment, like wet eels in his memory, hard to grab.

All he knew was that he was making progress this time, the damned Novice had been right in his suggestion. Agrian was just starting to leave a long, jagged crack to run down the door's median line when the boy returned behind him. Turning, he saw… just the boy, confused and more scared than before.

"I said get a Professor," Agrian snapped.

"I…I did, ran to—" —"Go!" The boy ran again, obeying as if Agrian were the older of them. Agrian felt rage burning at the total idiocy he was dealing with, then vented that anger back out on the door. It was really, really close to cracking now, if he had a hammer he was certain he could get through in one more blow. Maybe a dozen kicks would achieve the same result. The Novice returned again, alone again.

"What the fuck?!" the boy gasped.

"I keep running but…I'm being turned around, sent…"

"... sent back here," Agrian groaned. The Novice didn't seem to recognise the magic responsible, which meant Agrian himself sure as hell wouldn't, but it was clearly magic all the same.

"We're alone then, fine. How's your magic and mobility?"

"Uh, fine?" Agrian nodded.

"Get ready for a fight." He turned, and blew the door open with one last lash of his heel. The gateway to the dungeon was laid bare, and all hell broke loose.