Chương 62: Chapter 61: Taking Steps

++There were roadblocks on my journey to mastery over the Vornholt name, but I think I began it quite well all things considered. ++ - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, 'The Great Lich'. 1, 891 A. E. Qaigor's training went well. Better than Victoria's, in fact. While she was shackled by all sorts of pre-held beliefs about what she could and could not do, my younger brother was the exact opposite. He seemed to have grown up being repeatedly told he could do literally anything.

Not especially accurate, but very useful as someone attempting to make him push his limits. Much of my first session with him simply came down to having him run laps, jump, pick up heavy objects—I had requisitioned an anvil from a local smith, though he could not nearly lift that yet—all to find and eventually move beyond the upper bounds of what his body could do. That was much of the session. The rest of it was spent on me forcibly and painfully enhancing those limits.

"Sit still," I ordered. He did not.

"You don't tell me what to do!" Qaigor laughed.

"Sit still, dear," our mother chimed in. That had him obeying, the Baroness had a way of speaking that instilled the fear of Gods into her children. While Qaigor sat before me, I reached out and placed my hands on the sides of his head.

"This is going to be agonizingly painful," I smiled, then began pushing mana through his body. Qaigor screamed near-instantly, and my mother was on her feet.

"Do not stop me or he will be hurt," I barked. A total lie, but it served to buy me a few more minutes of doing my work on the boy. By the end of it he had tears in his eyes and was whimpering back from me.

"How do you feel?" I asked him. Qaigor punched me, a small hit with a small boy's fist, even with the vestiges of magical enhancement to his muscles. It was more the thought than the impact.

"Ouch," I said.

"Do not do that again." But he was past listening, scurrying across the room to literally hide behind our mother's skirts as she glared at me and stood defensively before him.

"What was that, Isabel?!" she spat.

"I was told by father to help him grow in power, I have done that." I did so by altering the flow of mana through his body using my own, guiding his power in all the ways exercise would have nudged it anyway. Except I sent it moving more quickly and more precisely. My mother did not seem to appreciate this.

"You hurt him, he was screaming." I turned to Qaigor at that.

"I am sorry if I hurt you."

"If!?" my mother was storming towards me now, in my face.

"If!? You heard him crying out, what did you think that meant?!"

"That he was in pain, but it is worth it, he will be stronger from this," I felt my own temper rising. I had gotten used to my father interfering with everything I did, my mother choosing now to stop being useless and begin affecting things just to get in my way? It was like a bad joke.

"You don't get to decide that," she snapped.

"Leave, now, this session is over." I kept myself calm.

"No," I told her. My mother was somehow startled by this.

"What did you just say to me, young lady?"

"I said no, this session is still ongoing. I will not let you sabotage the future of this family because of your weakness. It is pathetic enough to see it in you, I will not watch it inflicted on other people as well." She pulled a face as though she had just been wounded, as though she were feeling a torrent of blood escape her and caught between pain and enfeebleness"I…I…"

"You have nothing to say," I told her with an irritable sigh.

"Do you want to bring this to father and see how much he cares about Qaigor being hurt if it improves his chances as a warrior?" My mother's face was burning, I was almost surprised not to see waves of heat radiating off it into the air. Did I enjoy humiliating her like this, making her taste the disgrace of being ordered around by her own daughter? Not especially. But it was necessary. The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Just sit down," I said at last.

"And, if you must watch, do so quietly." She sat down.

"Qaigor," I called out, "come here." My brother just stared at me and trembled, and I sighed. I could have forced him obviously, but it would be unproductive in the long-term. I moved over and knelt down before him instead.

"What is wrong?" I asked him, forcing my voice to take on the same, gentle cadence my mother used to use when handling me as a baby. To my surprise, he actually softened up at it slightly.

"You…hurt…me…" He could still barely talk, sobbing between each word. Snot ran down his face, his cheeks were soaked with tears. Repulsive. I made myself reach out and caress him anyway.

"I know I did, and I am sorry." He sniffed, then leaned in to hug me. This time I made myself resist the urge to recoil. A pity. I had liked this dress, it went very well with my shoes. Now I would have to disintegrate it, then bury the ashes, then burn the site I buried them on. A small sacrifice for power.

"I need you to be very brave for me," I told my brother.

"Can you do that, Qaigor? Can you be brave for me?" A thought occurred.

"Brave like a grown man, like father." He pulled back instantly, looking up at me with fire in his eyes.

"I will be brave!" I smiled, and it was not entirely unnatural. Making myself ruffle his hair in what I hoped would seem an affectionate way, I led Qaigor back to the centre of the room and continued our practice. This time, he did not scream. There were two primary reasons for that; the first was that he had gotten used to the pain now, adjusting shockingly fast and clearly determined not to show any sign of weakness. The other was that there was a lot less of it now than in the first place.

My opening move had already worked to tweak his mana in some small way, and repeating it was nowhere near as invasive as doing it for the first time. He sat there, trembling and whimpering but keeping relatively silent. I soon found myself struggling not to grunt with exertion. This was mana-intensive, what I was doing. Most of my power was not actually being fed directly into his body, simply being used to work apart his own instinctive defenses.

In that regard, it was actually just an application of the same techniques I had learned to use for illusion magic with. Push power into my target and use it to tweak aspects of their body for my own ends. The only real difference here was that I was targeting Qaigor's mana more than his flesh or nerves, a unique feature of my ability to actually see the stuff of magic. We stopped after a few hours, by which point I felt as though I had drained almost as much of my mana as I had enhanced Qaigor's.

This would double as training for my own powers in the future, useful to know.

"How do you feel?" I asked my brother. He shrugged, and I waited for him to speak, to offer some additional insight. He did not.

"Qaigor, can…" I tried to think of a way of phrasing my question that would sink in for him, but there is only so much you can do when communicating with a six year-old. I quickly abandoned that method and chose a new one.

"Can you jump for me, Qaigor? As high as you can?" My brother liked that request, he liked it a lot. Qaigor jumped and I was pleasantly surprised to see him clear a good two feet vertically. I had seen him jump already, and never that high, but I was not sure about his specific limits earlier.

"Could he have done that before?" I asked my mother. She did not answer me, just stared ahead with a vacant look on her face. I feared I may have pushed her too far. It would not be convenient to my plans if she had some sort of psychotic breakdown, there was a strong stigma against such things within Garamon's high society.

"I couldn't!" Qaigor told me, fortunately rendering my mother's answer a moot point.

"Then we are making progress," I smiled. Qaigor smiled too. Days passed, and all of them were exhausting. When I was not helping to enhance Qaigor's physical powers, I was teaching Victoria, or reading, or doing any one of a number of other things. I was growing old enough now that people were starting to treat me as something close to an adult, which meant that I had to begin taking advantage of that sooner rather than later if I was to enter adulthood on my own terms.

To begin with, I started working on spreading my own direct influence through the Vornholt house. Officially speaking, I did not have authority within it. I was only the second eldest child, after all, and a girl at that. I was twelve. I had not even spent most of my time at home for the last few years, and when I returned to my old eavesdropping habits I learned that the household's staff had been alienated by each of these facts. I learned through hearing whispered insults and hearsay, of course.

Servants have liked to gossip in every time period, and if they did so more in modern Garamon than the ages I had seen, it was only because firing them had long since taken the place of tearing out their tongues with hot pincers when they were caught. In my humble opinion, this new practice showed a level of weakness on the part of wider society. I for one would not be tolerating disrespect the way modern magicians seemed to.

Then again, modern magicians did not enjoy nearly the esteem they had in my first life either. Another evil of the Gods. That one I could do nothing about, but my lack of household station was at least partially within my control. I got to fixing it by first working out exactly what the lay of the land was among the servants. It did not take me too long, they were rather simple creatures.

"Good afternoon," I said to a maid after cornering her one day. The woman froze as I addressed her, then forced a smile.

"Lady Isabel, good—good afternoon!" her positivity reeked of artifice. I would have known she was feigning the emotion even if I had not personally heard her refer to me as a 'twisted little freak' already. Magicians were really not a popular breed, female magicians even less so.

"Good afternoon Rebecca," I smiled wider at the look of fear and surprise on her face.

"Oh yes, I know your name. I have been making sure to learn everyone's names." I let her worry build for a moment as my words just lingered there.

"... I wish to get to know you all better," I finished. The woman seemed not to have noticed my lapse, and was smiling more sincerely now, with relief more than genuine friendliness I suspected.

"Rebecca," I echoed.

"I shall remember your face. It was nice to finally make your acquaintence, I am sorry it took me this long I…I was nervous," I feigned my own smile, and now the woman finally melted. It was remarkable how many oddities you could explain away when you looked like a child.