Chapter 6: The Strike

  ++In my earliest days after being reborn, I was at my most vulnerable. I felt the lack of magic more than the lack of physical power. Compared to the loss of my previous arcane strength, being reduced to a child’s body was almost no difference at all. I had, after all, always been weaker than my adversaries on that account. ++

  - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, ‘The Great Lich’. 1,891 A.E

  My plan to bond with Agrian the Younger by brutalising our teacher had some short-term impacts on Doctor Brown’s good mood, but was otherwise a great success and the start of a rather productive time spent working with each other. For the next few years, he, my brother and I made leaps and bounds of progress in our magical prowess. I, in particular, grew fast, because there was such a wealth of nourishment for my mastery in this new era.

  As I aged and grew taller, so too did my powers expand. By the age of six I was able to muster almost a thousand vis of magical power, a sizable fraction of what my own teacher could produce, and was learning things about the world that I would never have dreamed possible before my rebirth. Millennia of learning and discovery, recorded down for me to consume. A luxury.

  For the first time in my long existence, I actually found myself given too much to learn. There was so much of the unknown offered up to me for study that I simply did not have the time to take it all in at once. My father’s mysterious brand of magic, naturally, was among the things that made that cut. I had asked Doctor Brown about it once I had reached an age where my asking would not be suspicious, around four or five, only to find out that the phenomenon of superhuman strength in the magically stunted had something to do with exercise and training.

  That made my interest wither, at least until I was old enough to possibly do that training myself. Currently my body just lacked the dexterity needed.

  Growing older brought with it new irritations as well. In the classroom, at least, I was an intellectual entity, something of magic and learning. That was appropriate. Beyond it, as a child, I soon learned that particular things were expected of me. I had to dress appropriately for a young girl and be seen to smile inoffensively at social gatherings. Where Agrian was permitted to run around, and my younger brother to bumble about like an imbecile, I had to behave precisely like some pretty ornament decorating my parents’ home.

  It was not actually the clothing or expectations in particular that bothered me. I did not feel at odds with femininity in particular because I was no more a man than a woman—I was a skeleton trapped in meat. It was merely inconvenient to suffer such expectations. I looked forward to the day when I would be powerful enough to transcend them.

  But until that came, I settled for enjoying the day when, shortly after my sixth birthday, I had a growth spurt and could feasibly learn to replicate my father’s superhuman strength.

  ***

  There was no denying it at this point, Mary new. The girl, Isabel, was more talented even than Agrian the Younger. She’d not have believed that was even possible, not since hearing the boy was accepted by his own uncle at merely five years of age, but her own eyes and ears had confirmed it enough by now that there was truly no denying it.

  And she almost wished she was wrong. This was an opportunity, yes. A chance to save herself. No more debt and no more sweeping floors for half what she needed to survive, no more guillotine hanging over her neck.

  No more delusion, either, that she was anything close to a good person. But the concerns of her soul would have to take a backseat for now, at least measured against the concerns of her body. Mary would save herself.

  And the only price was ruining the life of a little girl.

  ***

  It was surprising, but not unwelcome in the slightest, when Agrian’s daughter Isabel walked her way up to him and asked if she could watch him in training. The girl was growing so fast that he almost didn’t notice how odd her speech was, despite her usual, collected mastery over every word still making her sound more adult than child. Though the squeaky pitch of her voice dispelled that particular illusion near-instantly.

  Her eyes did a lot to bring it back. Far too focused to look anything at all like a child’s, and Agrian found himself averting his gaze from them for the upteenth time. His little girl was certainly intense, if nothing else.

  “I would love you to watch me, darling,” he replied, forcing a smile to hide the mild awkwardness he felt. Handling children had never been his specialty, not even his boys.

  Isabel was easier to manage than her younger sister, Victoria, however. Easier to manage than Agrian the Younger, come to think of it. She didn’t cry, didn’t really whine or complain, and if her love of books was certainly un-ladylike, Agrian had to admit it was befitting a future magician. Indeed, the girl seemed to take her studies more seriously than even he did.

  So of course, she would get to watch him. How could he deny her a little something like that?

  ***

  My father was giggling like a moron as he led me to the training hall, but I tolerated his chimpish delight. If it meant I got to witness the mechanics of a warrior in action, it was worth it. I had put this on the back-burner for long enough.

  As was often the case, the sparring match featured my father balanced against several opponents at once. All of the other men wore padded clothes made thick enough that I doubted an arrow, let alone a blunted training weapon, would cause injury.

  But I was not concerned with that, and was not watching the action. I was watching the men. My father specifically, because he was the one who demonstrated by far the most magical energy as he moved. I watched it shifting in currents through his body and tried to observe patterns to it, remaining fixated on the sight and committed every spare detail to memory. Eventually he grew tired, which was where my newfound social skills came into use.

  “You are tired already?” I asked. He sent a look my way that told me the question was far from welcome.

  “Even warriors of my calibre tire, Isabel,” he panted.

  “I see.” The good thing about wearing a child’s face is that there is no need for subtlety, children experience all emotions strongly and show them more strongly still. I simply twisted my expression into one of abject disappointment, and it was instantly believable.

  “...But I think this old warhorse has a few more coals in the tank, eh? What do you think lads?”

  The lads in question, his battered training partners, mostly flailed around on the floor like decapitated fish, which even my father was forced to acknowledge made them unsuitable to continue practising against. Fortunately he had a near-inexhaustible supply of idiots to replace them, and things were soon back underway.

  I tried to tune out their inconsiderate groans of pain and agony, focusing on the actually important details. As I watched, I was starting to understand just how this mana was moving in my father’s body, and why it was strengthening him so.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  With a surplus, his Vessel was filling to the limits and at risk of rupturing itself. This cannot actually happen however, in practice a magician’s excess power will simply dissipate harmlessly from them no matter what. Now, however, it seemed my father was somehow, and entirely unconsciously, redistributing that dissipation. He was taking the excess power contained in his untrained Vessel and moving it through himself in currents, unknowingly putting it to work in strengthening his body. Using what would otherwise be wasted.

  But that was also what made this impractical. The only way I could take advantage of this and enhance my own body, at least as far as I knew now, was to let my Vessel fill itself up to maximum capacity and then train my body. Doing that was certainly possible for me, it was even easy—but that was the issue. I would have to forego my usual arcane training to let my reserves of mana top out naturally.

  It seemed I would be stuck with just magic, and a useless, childish body. At least until I could test a few other theories.

  ***

  It was all moving ahead so fast that Mary was actually pleased. She wouldn’t have had the nerve for a slow plan, wouldn’t have had the strength. It wasn’t that she had some honest streak at risk of winning out, the opposite. She was too dishonest to even be honestly dishonest.

  Cowardice would’ve sabotaged her. Fortunately, she had just enough will to last the day.

  I’m not doing anything myself, just leaving a window unlocked.

  Right. And distracting a sentry, and providing the floor plans, and leaking the info in the first place. Mary was doing so little, she ought to not even take a cut at all, right?

  Thinking about how horrible she was almost made her feel like she was less horrible than someone without any self-awareness at all. It was nice to pretend, for a while. Then things kicked off.

  ***

  Alongside being able to predict that we were in for an interesting afternoon, by the unexpected fact that our next few hours were to be spent in one of the family’s ballrooms, Agrian and I had been warned our next lesson would be an exceptionally long one. We had been warned because, despite how many times they saw evidence to the contrary, the adults around us could not seem to help but assume we were anything but eager to be given more time practising magic.

  Especially Agrian, who always relished the chance to show off whatever new advancements he had made.

  “Isabel, you ought to find this next trick rather simple,” the Doctor grinned as he settled into our temporary training hall. “We will be working with aether.”

  Aether. I could not help but scowl myself, though I was hardly surprised. I had known for a while now that much of the magic I had excelled at in the past—including my very own field of necromancy—was illegalised by Garamon’s magician guilds, and each reminder of that—each lesson dedicated to some more common substitute—infuriated me more. Still, this was better than most alternatives. Of all the spellwork I had hoped to master, aether seemed the most promising for helping me overcome the limits of my growing body.

  “Start fast then,” I ordered the Doctor. One benefit to this new life was that all the authority I had clawed and fought for in my previous existence came rather naturally. It was considered by most of the population to be my due, even as a child, and a female one no less. Structured social hierarchies arbitrarily placing people above others due to quirks of birth could be convenient if you enjoyed the right quirk.

  Doctor Brown did not quite see it that way, but he was also in no more position to contradict me than were most. As he opened his mouth to respond, however, something interrupted him. Indeed, I imagine it interrupted everything in the building.

  Because it was the building shaking.

  Such sensations were nothing new to me, naturally, but being quite so helpless while experiencing one was entirely novel, and uniquely disturbing.

  “What’s that?” Agrian asked. He did not look disturbed of course, just excited as always. I, for once, was less enthusiastic than him.

  “I don’t know,” Doctor Brown said. “But—” the wall exploded inwards, and the room became a shivering nightmare of flying debris and swirling dust clouds.

  Thankfully, I still had all the old instincts of several millennia spent battling against the divine. I had learned long ago to shield my fragile body first, and think second.

  My aether was substantially stronger than it had been a few years ago, perhaps having graduated from tissue paper to wool, and I conjured it in great thickness and kept both myself—and Agrian, a valuable investment—covered from the blast. And thick enough wool would, indeed, stop a blade.

  Or flying chunks of stone, as in this case. Little granules smaller than even my pinkie but moving fast enough that I knew they would have lacerated skin. The air was filled with swirling clouds of debris and rattled with sound, leaving it impossible to see anything at all as several men, warriors enhanced in the same way as my father accompanying a single magician, strode in.

  How did I count them with all the dust? Because mana does not rely on a clear sight line nearly as much as ordinary light, and if a stone wall was still capable of stopping me from looking at the arcane, a mere few yards of airborne detritus certainly was not. Which gave me the advantage.

  Doctor Brown was still uselessly stumbling around, his magic flailing as he tried and failed to find targets. To my surprise, I could see the magician—merely a glowing outline of mana in a vaguely humanoid shape—turning towards him instantly. So he had some way of peering through the mess, too?

  That made him target number one, and a perfect chance to try out a new spell of mine. The magic missile formed up and shot through the air like a sling stone, then thudded hard into the man’s neck.

  But this was not a harmless bolt of force. Magic missile is no more than a spell matrix, a configuration shaping the arcane energies it is infused with. This one was carrying heat, and all of that thermal energy belched itself across the man on impact. I heard the screams first, then smelled the cooking meat a moment later. His outline was flailing now, writhing around, stumbling, and I saw the other men freeze and begin backing away. Apparently this was not going at all according to their plans.

  I worsened their day further with another magic missile aimed at the farthest man from me, who was not quite distant enough for a good test of maximum range, but was moving around in such a way that I enjoyed something close to target practice. This time I did not chance a shot for his neck, instead hitting his midsection and actually seeing a bit of physical light and hearing the crackle of mundane flames as he started writhing.

  Apparently, these men were wearing flammables. That was not the sort of mistake a group used to magical combat would ever make.

  A few more remained, and now the debris was clearing. I saw them cross the room to lunge for Doctor Brown just as I saw him flail his arms out. I will admit, I fully expected the imbecile to perish. Instead he threw out a wall of what I first thought to be aether, then realised was actually pure force. Another matrix, like the magic missile, this time holding the kinetic energy in a single place to mindlessly repel anything that struck it.

  The attackers were too strong and fast to be thrown back, but they certainly slowed. Spells flung themselves from my teacher in a speed that was almost not mediocre, clearly the man’s technical skill surpassed his raw power. I watched as projectiles too varied to name struck out at one man after the other, some exploding, others clinging to their target in shrieks of lightning or tongues of flame. At times chunks of masonry flew from the walls to batter them, and at others galeforce winds would creep up to fling them unexpectedly high.

  But no matter what, the attackers were closing in. With the air cleared of debris, it would now be entirely obvious where my magic came from if I stepped in to help. I could not afford to be seen composing myself too well, then. A child gifted with words was one thing, but if I became known for having the seasoned skills of a veteran battle-caster, questions would follow.

  So I had to find some way to disguise that it was me.

  “Agrian,” I hissed. “You need to help!” He still had slightly more raw power than me—just over eleven hundred vis at his maximum output—and had stepped protectively in front of me as soon as the combat began. Nonetheless, the boy, still only eleven, had yet to actually do anything.

  “I can’t,” he whispered, pained and trembling. “My powers they…they won’t work.”

  “Close your eyes,” I told him. “That might help.”

  It did not, of course. What it did do instead was ensure that he could not observe the actual source of the spell that came next, merely looking up to see a man’s eyeball violently burst as it absorbed far too much heat in far too small a span of time. The boy did not appear to be fazed by this more than by anything else.

  “You did it!” I exclaimed, and saw him smile, apparently believing me that it had been his own attack.

  With one enemy too busy screaming in agony to continue fighting, those who remained had suddenly lost their advantage. I began to grow confident, before the magician recovered and entered the fray.

  A single wave of his hand taught me that he had a skill to match Doctor Brown, and I had already seen that he had the man’s measure of power. Magic clashed with magic and left the room rumbling again, sending me stumbling. By the time I recovered my balance and looked back, the fight was already over and the men were approaching.

  “Grab them both,” the magician snarled. Agrian thrust his hands out with a roar, but nothing came of it and he was snatched along with me. I could have fought them of course, could have maimed or even killed the men, but with the Doctor dispatched and all eyes clearly on me, there would be no doubt who was responsible for any given attack.

  And I could not hope to win this fight anyway. I could not even hope to delay it long enough for help to arrive. I let myself be taken.