Chương 158: Book 3 Chapter 16.5: Drastic Diversions

++Children are annoying. ++ - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, 'The Great Lich'. 1, 891 A. E. Not needing to drag Blakely around with me, I was able to travel via my own, preferred method. Flight. Supersonic velocity was still inconsistent, difficult and a shade risky for me, but if I stuck to just below that threshold I was able to cut through the sky as easily as anything. I called on Victoria, greeting the girl again before I left, then my mother.

She seemed to understand without being told what I was about to do and had the whole family gathered outside our estate to see me off. She was very clearly fighting the natural urge to smile as she watched, her lips quivering with excitement and eyes practically glowing.

"Go on dear," she coaxed, in almost the same voice she had once used to urge me into waddling towards her as a toddler.

"Show us." I hovered up into the air, and enjoyed the expressions that it inspired. Surprise and worry on my father, a squeal of joy from Victoria, cackling laughter from Qaigor and utter amazement from my mother. Then I raised higher, started building speed and shot ahead. My playful streak won out from there.

I simply could not help but loop back around and slow to gaze more clearly at their stunned expressions as they realised how advanced my aerial mobility was, then I took off properly and started shooting my way for Laugrey. It was a little over one hundred and fifty miles from Lachfel to Laugrey, as the crow—or, now, as the lich—flies. A short enough distance that I took barely more than fifteen minutes to fly it, including time taken to accelerate.

Flying, particularly the way I do it, is not terribly efficient, however. Though I was cancelling out drag force to keep my skin from being torn free and distributed in a miles-long arc behind me, that did not actually make me faster. In fact it consumed more energy to do that than it would have to simply provide enough acceleration to equalise with the drag forces trying to slow me.

And my thrust was not perfectly efficient either, I needed to redirect mana to constantly adjust my bearing and vector to keep from spinning off-kilter. Doing that would, at best, interrupt my flight and cost precious seconds. Doing it downwards would kill me in such a violent way that whoever gathered up my corpse would probably do so using a bucket and mop.

All these factors together meant that I was expending several times more mana than I would have theoretically needed to travel this fast under more ideal circumstances. But if there was one thing I had to spare now, it was mana. I worked out the calculations as I flew and arrived at an estimate of four or five gigajoules' kinetic energy equivalent spent on the journey.

Enough that I noticed its absence by the time I was decelerating to reach Laugrey at something slower than artillery shell speed, but far from my limits. I fancied that I could have flown across the ocean back to Poloira if I needed to. The Winzorth Institute received me with just as much awe as my family did. More, even. The magicians here knew enough about magical theory that they were aware how extraordinary what I was doing actually was, and why.

I felt a satisfied smirk bloom on my face as I moved past them and headed for the Grandmaster. The meeting came fast and I entered to see him looking fortunately still alive, though closer to death.

"This is about your lab?" he guessed.

"I have set up enough infrastructure elsewhere that I can now afford to move its contents, yes," I told him. By that I meant that I would take what was useful and possible to transport, and destroy everything else.

"And how are you planning on doing this?" he asked me. I hesitated a moment. I did have a solution of course. He was not going to like it.

"No," the Grandmaster growled.

"Absolutely not."

"It will work," I assured him.

"How are you being more risky than I am? I'm close to death!" My plan was rather simple. We would summon and unleash the most powerful fae possible and let it wreak havoc on the surrounding courtyard and building, partially binding it to make actual casualties less likely. Then repeat the process. With sufficient preparation time, it would be quite possible to summon a dozen or more.

Collectively their mana would make it hard to notice Lord Dread's, provided I did not do anything too powerful and was careful to hide my strength. On the other hand, it would also involve letting loose several murderous fae with more power than the Grandmaster himself into the area. I could see why he was reluctant.

"You will not be Grandmaster for much longer," I reminded him.

"Even now you are preparing to depart, yes? This will give you a reason to do so. If you are expelled for folly then it will make people all the less suspicious of your real reasons. You can pursue lichdom without fear." His eyes lit up at that, though he tried to hide it.

"... You're lucky I'm dying," he growled. I resisted the smile that might have irritated him into withdrawing his agreement, and we got to work. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. The incident would go down as one of the larger disasters in the Winzorth Institute's history, and it did not do much for the standing of its magicians.

No less than three of the outer buildings orbiting the main structure of the Institute were demolished, and it took most of the Professors and practically all of the guards working in concert with numerous recently-graduated students just to quell the fae and restrain them before their summonings wore off and they slipped back into their own realm. The whole thing took no more than five minutes.

But with so much mana pushed into the air, both by the fae and by the men trying to fight them, five minutes was just enough for me to finish my work. Oh, you're… you're back. Sascithius of course recognised the old power I was calling on. He fell silent, and I got the distinct impression he was sulking as I opened up the space to my pocket realm and diligently moved one thing after another into it. Gyrat was the last, and he shuffled through the magical portal with only a commanding gesture from me.

That left just myself and Sascithius.

"I CAN KEEP MY WORD NOW." I told him, already building a twin of the construct I had used to bind Nu'chista.

"CONGEAL YOUR PRESENCE INTO THE CENTRE OF THIS DEVICE." He was hesitant, for perfectly logical reasons. He would after all be fully at my mercy when inside the equipment.

"IF I WANTED TO ACT AGAINST YOU, I WOULD SIMPLY GRAB YOUR ESSENCE WITH MY MAGIC AND CRUSH YOU LIKE A WRITHING INSECT RIGHT NOW. YOU WERE NEVER EVEN HALF MY POWER IN OUR RESPECTIVE PRIMES, AND I AM CURRENTLY IN MY PRIME WHILE YOU ARE NOT." That decided him of course, when dealing with a person who cannot trust you the most reliable way to foster cooperation is to remove trust from the equation entirely.

Sascithius drifted into the prison, then I activated it to bind and hold his power before letting it drop into my pocket-realm. I reverted to Isabel Vornholt and hurried from the chamber a moment later, now disguising myself with the Grandmaster's ring and my own stealth spell. It was chaos outside, people thrashing around, fleeing, screaming. The sounds were music to my ears and the sights a portrait for my eyes.

I was almost tempted to linger and enjoy them all more, but I knew that I was better served positioning myself more properly. Once I was out of sight I took a magic missile to a wall and covered myself in debris from the broken stone, then made a show of stumbling deliriously out of the building like everyone else. I would have liked to be able to simply step into my own pocket realm and re-emerge elsewhere, but it unfortunately did not work like that.

I could only open a portal to it where I was in the physical world, which meant that to draw Sascithius out and place him in Poloira, I would have to fly back to Poloira. On the other hand, flying there was far easier than sailing or moving by sledge. I headed back for my family's estate first however, having told my father that I would do so before returning to the business. As before it took me only a quarter of an hour, and the attack on Winzorth gave me a good excuse to flee without any further preamble.

I was, after all, just a scared girl. My father still did not seem to have quite overcome his shock at my flight, though my mother gave by far the stronger reaction when I arrived. She wrapped her arms around me and practically squealed.

"I can't believe you actually learned to do it!" she gasped. Victoria was quick in emerging too, tugging at my clothes.

"Teach me!" she demanded.

"I cannot," I told her honestly.

"You are not skilled enough to learn this." I was fairly sure she could, eventually, but my technique currently was tailored to my unique ability for seeing and manipulating magic. Even magicians who were not that far behind me in raw potential, such as Agrian or Sethira, would not be able to emulate it. Eventually I would get round to rounding off a few edges and working out some trick that anyone could mimic, or at least anyone in the top thousandth of a percentile for magical talent like Victoria.

For now, my younger sister would have to be patient. As a twelve year-old girl of aristocratic privilege, however, patience was really more of a distantly abstract concept for her.

"Teach me!" she demanded, attracting my mother's stern look.

"Victoria, don't make demands like that. It isn't ladylike." I saw my sister's face scrunch up, and for the first time in a while was able to observe the little girl still buried under all the propriety and manners instilled in her while I was off at war. She stormed away without another word. My father was less awed and more wary at the sight of my new spell.

"How long have you been…Nevermind," he muttered. Apparently he did not want to know. He ushered me with him into his study and took a seat, then a very deep drink of scotch. At this point I was quite sure my father's being a warrior was the only reason his liver did not look the same as mine did. Mine as Lord Dread, that was.

"This oil business is in the family now," he said at last.

"You know what that means?"

"That you expect to influence its running?" I guessed.

"No," he replied.

"Or, well, yes, obviously, but not just that. No, it means that we need to think about what it means for future generations and secure it for them too." Oh no. Oh no, I could see where this was going. I did not want to, and my mouth was almost blurting out a hopeful denial before my mind could suggest anything more constructive.

"What are you suggesting?" I inquired.

"Qaigor," my father said simply.

"I'm talking about getting Qaigor acquainted with the running of the business, Gods know I'm too old to ever master it, but he's young and fresh and if he starts soon enough he'll have all the skills he needs before manhood." My first instinct was to argue, though I realised my father had a point. If I was to be permanently saddled with only dual ownership in this business, then it did, at least, make sense to ensure that whichever idiot was dragging me down proved to be as un-idiotic as was possible.

Though as far as candidates went, Qaigor would not have been my first choice.

"How do you want to go about this?" I asked.

"Well, obviously you'll be taking Qaigor with you and he's going to spend a few months studying the business each year." And being taken care of by me, because apparently I was expected to have nothing better to do.

"This was all you wanted to talk to me about?" I asked him. He smiled.

"Yes, but you can see the importance I'm sure." I said nothing, just took my leave. And, of course, I took my younger brother with me. Qaigor giggled as we walked out and I saw my father looking pleased as we went. He would owe me for this one, whether he knew it yet or not.