Chương 77: Chapter 74: A Critical Moment

++My brother usually meant well, which did not make him any less of an inconvenience. ++ - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, 'The Great Lich'. 1, 891 A. E. Aryqatan did not realise, at first, what she was feeling. Did not realise what the sensation was that now reached deep into her and curled a cold hand around her heart. It had been centuries since she was imbued with power. Bequeathed by Zameka, the great traitor, she nonetheless had the almighty magic of a Demigod, and it had grown as she did.

From her earliest days she had been taught to understand her place in the world, and wrapped in that unbreakable conviction that she was strong, and all others were weak. She was a servant of the Gods themselves, their will made manifest. A force of nature. And she was not finding that conviction challenged here. More than once she was opposed by reanimates, disgusting, withered bodies seeming to mock her with the ancient finery they wore and the powerful magics they unleashed.

She felt flames lick her skin and lightning rebound from her with barely a tingle, simply surging on ahead to lay waste to them all. Not a single one took more than one blow for her to obliterate, the great war-scythe manifesting in her hands as quickly and easily as a long-scorned lover begging for her affections. She fed it with rotting blood and justice, and the chambers around her shivered with every swing. Walls were her next impediment.

Aryqatan could feel the source of the infernal power down here, and knew there was a veritable maze between it and her. She did not have time for that. Rather than navigate the place slowly and tediously, she just ran through whatever obstacles impeded her and felt them crumble before her. Few materials could impede a Demigod's strength, even a minor Demigod like her, even when they were made several feet thick. Sandstone was not one of those materials.

Every physical fact around Aryqatan was just a reminder of her dominance, of her natural superiority to all other things. And she did not need that reminder to begin with. The lowliest of Demigods was still more than a match for the greatest of magicians. So why was she afraid? All her life, she'd lived feeling the constant connection to the Gods.

Hers was not as powerful, with her birth mother having turned traitor long ago she did not have a single divine patron from whom she sprung forth, but even still, the blood of divinity flowed in her veins and linked her to its source. Except for now. Now, in this ancient ruin, Aryqatan could not feel that link for the life of her. The connection seemed to simply have been cut off. She was alone, unwatched, unknown. Whatever happened to her in here would not be witnessed nor recorded.

She could not pray for guidance or help. If she died, would her spirit even return to the Gods for resurrection? A cold chill ran through her a second time even as she burst through another wall. Aryqatan wanted so badly to turn back at that moment, but the magical presence ahead was still growing stronger, and she knew better than to let it reach its peak. She forced herself to venture onwards, defying every instinct she had. Whatever was going on here, Aryqatan would stop it.

Either stop it, or die in the attempt. Maybe permanently. That demanded caution, and she forced herself to slow. She dispatched one undead servitor after another, cleansing everything she encountered and roaming around to encounter yet more once she was done with any given section.

The work was tedious and left her certain she was making a mistake, left her wishing she had the hand of the Gods on her to simply teleport too, but the idea of so many of her enemy's minions being left free and roaming when she confronted it demanded that it be done properly. Properly, and sluggishly. She could only hope not too sluggishly to reach the ritual.

Agrian almost killed Korig and Varnal when he ran into them, but fortunately he was not quite that panicked. He and Bagran's route had sort of looped them back around as they went, and they'd stumbled onto the other pair while they were making their way down their own tunnel. Magic had been primed, but not thrown.

"What happened to you two?" Korig asked as he washed his gaze across their tattered clothes.

"We got in a fight," Bagran answered before Agrian could.

"Some horrible undead bastards, but they were no match for us." Agrian decided not to point out that it had been one undead, that they'd fought it two-on-one, and that they'd almost died in the attempt. That would probably just piss off Bagran and frighten the other boys, and he needed everyone sharp.

"We're searching for the others," Agrian explained.

"Isabel and Aryqatan." That seemed to make his fellow novices a lot less agreeable.

"No!" Korig yelled.

"This place is infested with undead, I say we clear the whole place out in the name of the Gods!"

"I say we leave," Varnal countered.

"We don't know what else is down here or how powerful it is, I know you can all feel that thing somewhere down at the bottom of this ruin. I'd rather we not stick around to wait until it reaches whatever level of power is its maximum." This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work. Bickering started, and Agrian just stood there staring and listening, actually lost for words. They were arguing, now of all times?

"Shut the fuck up," Agrian growled, grabbing Korig and Varnal by both of their faces, digging his fingertips right into the hinges of their jaws.

"We're going deeper because my sister is in danger. We're sticking together because it's our best chance of survival, and we're finding the Demigod because it's… also our best chance of survival. Now we're going to move and nobody else is going to waste any of our fucking time standing around squabbling like kids." He released them, and saw both boys stumble back massaging their jaws where he'd grabbed them. Agrian turned and started down the passage without waiting for a response, his heart pounding.

He was certain they'd just ignore him, let him storm off himself and try to flee as he did. Instead, they joined him in his path down into the ruins. Agrian didn't let himself get too taken aback by that, just focused on giving more orders. He was rather certain that if he ever stopped doing that, they'd simply stop obeying him. Seemed like momentum more than charisma was getting his way at the moment.

"Bagran, you have that ridiculously destructive spell, right? I want you on stand-by to use it, you're the only one of us who can end fights fast." Bagran would always have been the trickiest to boss around, so Agrian handled him a bit more cunningly. The spell in question was probably some family secret, and its destructive effects were every bit as impressive as Agrian would've expected from a magician house as old and talented as his. Of course the boy was willing to show it off.

That Agrian had singled it out as their best shot at dispatching the undead only made him all the more eager.

"Alright," he nodded to himself as he saw his fellow novices all in place. Agrian realised then that he'd accidentally become leader. He let that sit in his mind as they moved deeper into the dark. By the time they were halfway down the hall, he'd already decided it was a good thing. A necessary thing. Agrian wasn't going to rescue his sister without full command of the local resources.

The magic emanating from deeper in the ruins was growing stronger with every moment, and I caught my body salivating like a dog's as I approached it. Just when I thought it would plateau, there would come another spike that unveiled yet new heights of its strength. Was it equal to a Demigod yet? No, but it was growing close. It was dark ahead of me. I could have produced a floating source of light, but that would make me all the easier to spot in the shadows.

Instead I cast a mobile spell matrix just ahead of me, feeding mana into all the light that passed through it towards my eyes, enhancing and strengthening it slightly. Colours became less sharply defined, and detail was flattened out, but I could clearly see most textures ahead of me. And so when the next undead ambush came, this time I was the one who surprised the reanimates by accurately casting when they surely expected me to flounder in the dark.

Two of the robed magician-types this time, enough that even I would not have been sure about winning by myself. Were it not for my ambush. I opened combat with a magic missile volley sent hurtling into the closest, six projectiles each with enough mana to shatter stone. The undead's bones broke and it collapsed without even making a sound, just as the other spun. For a precious moment it focused on defending itself, raising a barrier to protect the tissue it had just watched me destroy so easily in its ally.

A pointless effort; Doctor Brown's barrier-killer punched clean through and saw another two magic missiles striking home. I was moving past before the second corpse could even hit the floor. The sounds of fighting had fortunately not been that great, magic was a lot quieter than gunshots or even weapon collisions. Aether and pure mana just do not conduct sound like gunpowder and steel. Even so, I was cautious about venturing deeper.

Keeping an eye out for traps, or rather; sending waves of mana outwards to rebound from all surfaces and wash back over me to gauge whether I was walking into a hall with any hidden mechanisms within it. Oddly enough, I had quite a straight run of things. Up until I neared the source of this ruin's magic. Chanting, that was what struck my ears first.

Then I listened more carefully and recognised, by how the sound was far less echoey than I had been growing used to, that it was emerging from a more spacious chamber than the corridor I now crept through. I had brought the Grandmaster's ring with me, and activated that now along with a cloaking spell formed with my own mana to bend the light away from me and mute the sounds. This combination had recently been tested against the people of Yir, but I was less confident it would work here. A useless worry.

As I edged down the hall and finally stepped into the wide chamber it led to, I saw a group chanting so loudly and intently that they would not have noticed me if I had strutted in uncloaked. There were a dozen or so, all in technicolor robes and organised into two half-rings around a great stone altar. I barely noticed any of the physical details about them however. Their magic, and the magic pooling between them, snatched most of my focus.

It took me mere seconds to identify them as the source of the growing power. Or, more specifically, their ritual. It had been a long time since I had seen the deep shades of necromantic mana, and longer still since I had seen a gash into the underworld. Spirits screamed and moaned from the other side where they roiled in the fate awaiting all dead things, and I saw fingers clawing at reality where desperate victims wished to escape.

They were failing for now, and I could see where their powers were siphoned off, caught up in the magical vortex that was the ceremony still being carried out. The dead as a power source. It was an interesting idea, though a shade puerile in execution here. I had stumbled across it myself millennia ago, which was how I pieced together the final aspect of this magical working. The girl on their altar.

She could not have been older than fourteen, and she must have been sedated with something because she lay against the stonework without even moving a muscle. I saw a blade dancing in one of the robed magicians' hands and knew that she would be the climax of this ritual. Spirits from the underworld, and a spirit from the living world making its way through at the same point. Pressure from both sides. They intended to tear open the skin of reality, but to what end I could only guess.

And I was looking forward very much to finding out. The girl let out a shiver for a moment as one of the men approached her with the knife, and I watched in fascination. I had to admit that as far as sheer efficiency went, one teenager's life for all this knowledge was about as good an exchange as I had ever seen. In the past I had usually been forced to the trouble of kidnapping hundreds of human subjects for my experiments to yield results like I was expecting here.

But the run of bad luck awaiting me after my rebirth was far from finished.

"Get away from her, you fucks!" a voice rang out, followed by a magic missile that set the air alight before barely being deflected by one of the magicians. I watched stone explode as it glanced off a distant wall, then saw a group of boys rushing into the chamber. Leading them was Agrian, because of course he was.