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Book 5, Chapter 38
🕑 Added 2024-12-02 14:10:45 +0000 UTCThe Elder Council sat on their chairs, more thrones, really, and glared at me with various levels of mixed animosity and fear. Rounding them all up had been a chore, especially once I had to start dragging them around while keeping them subdued. While I was grabbing the fourth one, the first three had tried to pull off some sort of ritualized spell that probably wouldn’t have done much to me anyway, but which I didn’t need to deal with at that exact moment. Number four was an expert transmuter, and blocking those kinds of spells in combat was difficult enough without the distractions.
In the end, I’d managed to snag the whole collection. At least, I was hoping I’d gotten the five correct people. It was entirely possible I’d snagged some decoy frontman who pretended to be a member of the Elder Council in public, but there wasn’t a lot I could do about that today. If there was a hidden council, I might never find out as long as they dropped their activities back on Olpahun. That was still a win in my book. I wasn’t here for vengeance, just to eliminate a problem.
“Alright,” I began from my position in the middle of the room. Supplicants were supposed to stand here so that the Council could study them while they petitioned for whatever it was they wanted. Without the enforced rear lighting casting them in shadows, they didn’t look mysterious or dangerous. They just looked stupid.
The head of the Elder Council was named Domon. As far as I could tell, he was more of an administrator than an archmage at this stage in his life, though I’d seen firsthand that he could still fight if he needed to when I’d abducted him. He sat in the center of their group, an unconvincing sneer on his lips as he stared down at me.
“You all know who I am, I’m sure,” I said. “You can probably guess why I’m here, but just because I don’t want there to be any misunderstandings, let me make it clear. You sent agents to my home and are actively working against me. I’m not happy about that, so we’re going to resolve the situation right now.”
“Who do you think you are?” one of the councilmen demanded from my left. I mentally identified him as Kalig. By all appearances, he was the Global Order’s spymaster, but the fact that those low-level thugs I’d interrogated knew who their spymaster was told me that he was either terrible at his job, or he was just a cover for the real one. Kalig was the reason I had my suspicions that I hadn’t gotten the people who were really in charge.
Well, I’d still be sending a message today, even if I didn’t kill the actual leaders of this cabal. Hopefully, they’d take the hint and stay out of my business. If I had to come back to the other side of the world to deal with them again, I was going to be killing a whole lot of the best mages Manoch had to offer, and I really wanted to avoid doing that.
“Keiran of the Night Vale,” I told him. “But you already knew that.”
“We know some kid is claiming that name. There’s been no proof you’re the actual reincarnation of Keiran.”
“I would think the fact that the five of you are sitting here, very much against your wishes and without enough mana to light a candle between you, would serve as sufficient proof of my capabilities.”
Kalig bristled and started to choke out what he undoubtedly thought was a clever retort, but Domon cut him off before he could get going. “Enough bickering,” the leader said. “Whether or not you truly are Keiran is irrelevant. You’re obviously powerful, but unlike us, you’re alone. There are a hundred archmages in the Global Order. Not even you can challenge our combined might.”
“Yes, yes, you’re very impressive in numbers. I’m sure. But it’s just the six of us here right now, so that doesn’t help you all that much.”
“Stupid kid,” Tredor said. “Whatever concessions you force out of us now will be temporary. The reparations you’ll be making for your rash actions today will burden you for the rest of your life.”
“I doubt it.”
Unlike with Bakir, I’d made sure to rip out their emergency escape devices as I’d captured them. The last thing I needed was to have to go haring off after a runaway. I’d stripped them of every possible countermeasure, every magical contingency, every little trinket tucked away in real or phantom space, and corrupted the ward schema guarding this room. Unless an entire battalion of mages marched in here to rescue them, they were completely at my mercy.
And if that did happen, I’d kill all five of them before I let them get away.
“What do you even want us to do?” Domon asked after shooting a look at Tredor, who scowled back but lapsed into silence.
“Recall all of your agents back to Jeshaem. I don’t care what you do on this continent, but you’ll stay off mine.”
I’d half-expected this to result in an immediate round of blustering and posturing, especially given their outbursts so far, but it seemed that now that we were getting into the meat of things, the others were going to let Domon do the talking. It made sense, in a way. They wanted to present a united front to their petitioners. I’d probably thrown them off by abducting all of them and draining their mana.
Now that they were back in familiar territory, previous behaviors were reasserting themselves. Domon didn’t even glance at his fellow councilmen before saying, “Easy enough to accomplish, but we’d need a good reason to do so. What can you offer in return?”
“I could leave without killing you,” I said dryly.
“That’s a poor basis for a negotiation.”
“Who said we’re negotiating? You sent people out to harass my allies to dig up information about me, and you’ve got a team actively working with my enemies now. I’m not negotiating with you. I’m dictating terms.”
While it might not be strictly true that the Order archmages over in Ralvost had already hashed out a deal with the remnants of Ammun’s military, I didn’t want them speaking with those people in any capacity. The best result that could possibly come from that was that the cabal would come down on the army and wipe it out, and I didn’t need their help with that.
“We’d like a moment to discuss our options in private,” Domon said.
“No.”
“How can you expect us to work with you when you act like this?” one of the other councilmen snapped.
“I don’t expect you to work with me. I expect you to do what I say because I’m bigger, stronger, and meaner than you, and you operate in a world where might makes right. You don’t get to choose what rules apply when it’s convenient to you.”
“That’s hardly a charitable assessment of the situation,” Domon told me. “Despite how you’ve accosted us, I do still believe there are benefits to be found between us. Why not work with us instead of further antagonizing the Order with every action?”
Ugh. Politicians.
“Listen, I’ve got other problems to get back to solving. I’m running out of time and patience, so let’s just keep this simple. I’ve told you what I want you to do. Are you going to do it or not? Feel free to vote on it if it’ll make you feel better.”
“There is no need for—”
“Nope. We’re done talking about this. Yes or no,” I said.
“If you could just—”
I interrupted Domon again. “Talk to your friends, not to me. You’ve got a minute to come up with an answer.”
I only gave them that long because that was how long it would take me to finish setting up the spell I’d been slowly building over the last hour. With each passing second, it spread farther and farther, and it was now surging across the surface of Olpahun toward Ralvost.
“Alright, yes. Yes, we’ll recall our field teams,” Domon said. “It will take some time to relay updated orders to them, but you have my word that we’ll get them back home as quickly as possible.”
“No need to worry about that. I’ve already taken care of that part,” I said. I gestured behind me and a large, silvery illusion faded into existence. It appeared to be a mirrored wall, ten feet tall and thirty wide. Hundreds of little pictures were displayed on it, each one a different teleportation platform in the Order’s network.
“This uses your platform network to open communication scrying windows in all your many, many bases. I’ve even linked it to my own network back home to relay the message all the way to Ralvost. Here, you can speak into it using this.” I pulled a glass sphere the size of my head out of my phantom space and floated it across the intervening space to land on the table in front of Domon. “Now. Go ahead. Recall your minions.”
I didn’t let my self-satisfied smile through to my face. Domon had only agreed because he thought it would give him a few days or so to work on the problem without me standing right in front of him. What I’d put together here was an extraordinarily wasteful use of mana, but then, I’d gained quite a bit by draining five archmages, one of whom had been at stage six and inside his demesne when I’d caught up to him.
That actually pushed me over my maximum capacity, so I’d started building the spell right then and there. Half the prep work was done before I even finished that abduction, just in the interest of being thrifty with the mana. I’d had to add a nice chunk of my own mana to the mix to keep the spell going, but I’d recovered all of that off Domon when I’d picked him up.
The control orb I’d fabricated glowed in the archmage’s hands as he relayed his telepathic instructions. He knew that they were being broadcast to every single platform, many of which were attracting small crowds of two to five people. They couldn’t all be archmages, but I supposed an organization this size needed some support staff, and maybe the rest were the students of the next generation.
For those targets he was specifically trying to reach, the scrying portal just served as a conduit for Domon’s telepathy to pass through. Fortunately for all of us, the team wasn’t currently inside Ammun’s tower, else I’d have needed to take some drastic steps to get the message to them.
‘Abandon your current objectives immediately and return home,’ Domon’s voice whispered into their minds.
Though I couldn’t see them, I could feel their confusion through the telepathic link. ‘Sir? How are you doing this?’ one of them asked.
‘Unimportant at the moment. All will be explained later. Do you understand your instructions?’
‘…yes… but… If we leave now, we’ll be weakening valuable connections we’ve spent the last week cultivating. It will make our work much more difficult when we come back.’
I knew it. We hadn’t been able to get eyes on the actual meetings, but it wasn’t hard to guess. I knew exactly what the Order was about. They were trying to play both sides to their own advantage. Though Domon’s face revealed nothing, he must have been wincing inside at the damning words.
‘Irrelevant. All of you need to return at once.’
‘I understand. We’ll be back within the next six hours.’
Considering the weak range of their teleportation spells and the fact that they were likely going to have to free-cast each and every one of them, six hours probably was excellent time by the Order’s standards. It would have taken me perhaps ten minutes to get off the continent and another twenty to cross the ocean to my current location.
And they called themselves archmages. This little group had a lot to learn if they wanted that title for real.
“There. Are you satisfied now, Keiran of the Night Vale?” Domon asked as he placed the glass sphere back down on the table.
“Not quite,” I said.
Comments
Alf
Not everyone has to have good intentions from the start for them to be able to be allies. Trust is built
Alf
There seems to be a trend. Any time he finds fellow mages, his distrust breeds them into enemies
Yshua
I’m looking forward to seeing where this goes, but at the same time feel like I should let a buffer build up to read all at once.
