Chương 120: Chapter 106 - Quick Thinking

++Sethira was one of the most sociable and reliable liches I have ever met, which itself made me somewhat wary around her. It felt wrong to see such behaviour in one of my own kind, given the contempt we usually have for concepts of teamwork or cooperation. The path of the lich is a lonely one. And that is by my own influence and design. Only the strong should be able to walk it, and the strong should need nothing but themselves.

That is not to say I am opposed to pooling power when it proves advantageous, or making deals. It is just important for both parties to maintain a healthy distrust. ++ - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, 'The Great Lich'. 1, 891 A. E. It took far fewer magic missiles than I may have feared to totally destroy our work, though the hardest part was still how much it stung to actually unleash them. But sentiment does not stop a lich from doing much.

Within the minute we had reduced our hard efforts to so much dust and molten slag, salvaging the irreplaceable components and turning to flee from the rest. The chamber was already clearing out as we did so. Good. Every captive necromancer was a potential failure point in leaking information about us. I actually considered it a mark of Sethira's weakness and immaturity that she refused to kill everyone present out of hand. On the other hand, her foresight and paranoia could not be questioned.

No less than six routes led directly out of this main chamber, all in different directions and to different quadrants of the city. We took the one that would bring us looping down away from the greatest congregation of Garamon's forces, and we took it fast. Propelling ourselves along with magical winds without fear of being traced.

If there was one good advantage to our ritual's arcane spillage, it was the fact that we could use as much personal power as we liked and have effectively zero risk of being tracked by it. I had become a considerably powerful magician in my own right already, but the Grandmaster of Garamon could not have felt my power from ten paces away over the maelstrom around us. We made good time. We made good time, but it became increasingly obvious as we went that it was not good enough.

Something was closing in on the site of the ritual. The flow of mana had stopped, which meant that the air was starting to return to normal, and our powers were growing more easily detected. It was for this reason we could sense that the Demigods Aryqatan and Nu'chista had already found our ruined chamber, and were already tearing away down different exits from it at speeds that would have produced wind forces able to flay a man down to the bone.

Neither of them had picked the correct tunnel, the one that would bring them to us. It barely mattered. They were both so many times faster than we were that it was extremely likely they would find us simply by spanning each tunnel and then doubling back to try another.

If they did not think of that, were too panicked or stupid to consider how difficult it would be for us to cross so much distance ourselves in so little time, and failed to deduce that they could catch us in the middle of a tunnel now, then we would get away. But I was not confident they were that stupid. We continued in silence, not talking, not even looking at each other.

Liches can speak while occupying our bodies with deliberate action easily, but the tension we felt just now had practically reduced us to organic levels of mental ability. A minute of running was all it took before we realised the hopelessness of our situation.

"They're gaining too fast," Sethira growled. She did not need to tell me.

"Aryqatan, that is Aryqatan you are feeling," I informed her.

"The one you fought before at your old ruins." I was suddenly paranoid about my voice reaching back down the smooth tunnel and carrying those words to my pursuers. I doubted that could happen with the sound of us running so loud, but I wasted a few vis to shielding the air behind us from noise all the same.

"You know her?" Sethira asked me.

"Somewhat. She is the less violent of the two. I believe she feels some kind of cognitive dissonance about the things she is required to do for her Gods." Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. Cognitive dissonance that did not stop her from continuing to do those things, of course. Which made it useless in every way.

"Is she likely to kill us on sight?" Sethira asked.

"To take us prisoner, what?"

"You cannot be intending to surrender," I frowned.

"No," Sethira replied.

"I'm not." I saw Sakhent then, for a moment. Milliseconds in fact. I saw all that ancient power come surging forth from Sethira's soul, not contained in her Vessel but bound to it somehow, like it was a loyal servant to the new part of her magic. I saw it wrap around her new lifetime's power and enhance it. And then I saw a tendril of necromantic energy reach out and snap my leg like a twig. Shielded as I was, it did not matter. A steel wall would have done no more than my barrier did.

The pain was more shocking than debilitating, and the swift collapse onto stone was irritating. Sethira's ancient power had already receded by the time I fell, revealing only the girl.

"I'm sorry, for what it's worth," she told me.

"And I consider our alliance to still be on. But we can't both escape now. You need to stay behind and keep the Demigods off me, do whatever you must behind enemy lines, but make sure they don't interrupt the next ritual. We've done it once now, gone deeper than I did before, I can recreate this again. We just need time. You can buy it." She was fleeing before I could reply, tearing off down the corridor at a speed I would have struggled to match before, and most certainly would not be matching now.

With one leg down my simple choice of sprinting with a strong, magical wind at my back was right out. I could not make a sled as I had used to cross the deserts, not with the tunnel shaped as it was and the risk of corners too great, and I did not know any other way to evade capture. I had no choice, if I was to escape, but to devise an entirely new means of transportation through these tunnels. It was an interesting challenge if nothing else. I thought fast. Perhaps faster than I ever had before.

There is a uniquely strong motivation to knowing you are seconds-to-minutes away from being confronted by one of the most powerful living beings in existence. Wind had served well while we ran, though I could not slide over this tunnel. The ridged floor seemed made specifically to avoid that. What if I avoided the floor, then?

Hovering properly was beyond me, I had not yet been given the chance to interrogate that trick out of Bagran, but I had made a study of modern aerodynamics at the Winzorth Institute and my knowledge of them was far better now than it had been thousands of years ago. I began my working with aether. Aether planes, aether loops, aether flaps, and an aether structure wrapped around my body to hold it all together and take the strain off my fragile flesh. Ordinarily, aether is naturally light.

Mine was dense, now, and if it would still have floated easily on top of water, I was forced to create so much for this magical mechanism that I actually felt the weight slightly on my shoulders. I elongated the flaps slightly to account for this, then began my first test flight. Mana propelled me forwards and sent me twisting promptly into one wall, hitting it almost as hard now as I had landed after that cloudscraper was torn in half with me inside it.

My mechanism broke and I cursed as my wounded leg was jarred by the impact, pain dancing up through me. Only pain, though. Not further injury, not any magical interference. I ignored the unpleasant sensation and focused once more on my flying mechanism. It was not hard to work out what had gone wrong; the flaps were too symmetrical and directed air in the same direction as it tore past me. This caused my body to be accelerated in the other direction, leading to a nasty impact.

Remaking the whole thing was unnecessary, I kept the basic structure unchanged but mirrored half of the flaps before trying again. I got a good twenty paces before landing this time. My body was the problem now, a stupid, natural form that cocked up or down at the slightest shift of balance, then acted as another flap to throw my whole, carefully measured mechanism off-kilter. It had been at least twenty seconds already. Something close to panic started bubbling up inside me.

By the time I found a workaround for my balance problem, another issue reared its head. Then another. I was essentially sprinting past hours of research and test-flights by iterating on the design even in mid-air, and still I was not yet able to propel myself forwards more than a dozen or two paces. I was getting closer, though. I knew I was getting closer. I could feel it. What I also knew was that Aryqatan was getting closer behind me. She had entered this tunnel, and being generous was a few miles behind me.

I had, perhaps, a minute, then I would be faced with a very difficult conversation. My final attempt was the best, taking me a good fifty paces further down the tunnel… And dumping me right at the feet of one of Sethira's custodians. I was confused, then cautious, then frantic as they began slithering towards me in what I knew was an attack stance. The custodians were around my body in moments, primed to strike and tear me asunder. My barrier was up, staving off the first blow. It blocked the next few, as well.

These creatures were riddled with magic that even I was impressed by. The sheer number of them, the fact they could apparently self-replicate given enough time, and the fact they required no upkeep made their level of strength astonishing. I felt that strength as it gnawed away at my shield and started wearing it down. Not long now. Sethira's betrayal, was it more complete than I had thought? I had little to do but consider that as I redirected magic to warding off my attackers, pinned in place as I was.

Had I been truly backstabbed, was I about to be destroyed? My answer came just moments later.