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Book 5, Chapter 31
🕑 Added 2024-11-21 14:16:42 +0000 UTCSurprisingly, the ointment of aging was properly made. I hadn’t given Senica enough credit for her work, but she’d done it all perfectly. Even substituting a few reagents for things she could actually get her hands on had been done flawlessly.
“The good news is that your only mistake was using it now,” I said. “You’ve thrown your body’s chemistry out of order, but that’s easy enough to fix if you know how. Though, it’ll be a bit harder since I’ll have to do it for you. You’re going to need me to adjust things every few days for the next few weeks until the ointment’s effect is completely out of you.”
“What if we didn’t stop the treatments?” Senica asked.
“Then you’d need me to keep manually adjusting your body until you’re an adult.”
“Let’s do that.”
“No, for a few reasons. First of all, Mother and Father will never agree to this. Second, I’m too busy. Third, enjoy the last few years of your childhood before you have no choice but to deal with being an adult.”
“I’m basically already an adult,” she argued. “What’s the difference between now and then? A few inches of height and maybe my boobs get bigger? Why do I need our parents’ permission, anyway? And if you’re so busy, just tell me how to do it myself.”
There was some truth to that. Though Senica was not legally an adult as far as what passed for laws around here were concerned, she was a mage proficient enough in all disciplines of magic to have graduated from just about any magic academy I could think of off the top of my head. She wouldn’t be top of her class or anything, but that was a lack of resources, not ability.
“I’ll make you a deal,” I said. “I’ll give you the spells that regulate your body when adjusting your age to keep it from becoming unbalanced. If you can learn them yourself and successfully manage the side effects of the ointment, I’ll back up your argument when you try to convince our parents that you should be allowed to do this.”
Left unsaid was that even if they denied Senica’s demand, she already knew how to make the ointment and would know the magic required to use it safely. She could just go ahead and age herself up anyway. My thinking was very simple here. She was going to do it whether anyone else wanted her to or not. If that was the case, at least she’d be able to use the ointment without making herself sick.
It wasn’t like there were a lot of good options. There was no way I could harvest every reagent near New Alkerist to prevent Senica from making more of the ointment. Imprisoning her was a laughably bad idea. Using mind magic to rip the knowledge of how to perform the alchemy out of her head was possible, but came with a list of dangerous side effects even when performed by a master. And besides, I wouldn’t do that king of long-term memory editing to someone I hated and wanted to see dead, let alone to my own sister.
Which just left finding a way to motivate her to learn how to do it right. It wouldn’t be the end of the world for her to skip three or four years, though I was sure our parents would be vehemently against the idea. Their reaction to my own accelerated aging was all the proof I needed there. But I suspected that, unless something went terribly wrong, Senica had a good thousand years or so of life in her.
I was less concerned about her wasting a few years and more about her recklessly wielding the power a stage three or four core granted her. Fortunately, at that point, it was mostly an enhancement to how much mana she could hold and how quickly she could replace it. It wasn’t until stage five that things started to get a little weird, so it was more a matter of how much faster she’d be able to get herself into trouble for the time being.
It didn’t take Senica long to reach a decision. “Deal,” she said. “What do I need to know?”
“This is a type of healing magic, which is a cross between conjuration and transmutation. In this case, we’ll be replacing the conjuration elements with invocations since you’ll be performing this on yourself. You will, of course, need some diagnostic spells so that you know what you’re doing,” I began, ignoring her groan.
“Why is it always divinations with you?” she grumbled.
“Because knowledge is the foundation of everything else,” I said. “Why do you always complain so much? We both know you’re going to work hard and master these spells.”
“I like to complain. It’s a hobby.”
“You need better hobbies. Now, let’s start with identifying the issue…”
*
The fact of the matter was that I did not have the time I needed to manually teach Senica all of the spells she’d need for this, but I had prepared a library of books for her future learning a few years back. I gave her a basic overview of the process, produced the volumes that had what she needed to learn, then set her loose to practice using the immense amount of mana available inside my demesne.
I’d check in on her when I had some free time, but other than briefly contacting Father to let him know that Senica would be here for a few days to learn everything she needed to know to fix the problems she’d accidentally created in her body, I had to turn my attention back to other projects. Ammun’s tower still hadn’t collapsed yet, and if it didn’t start showing signs soon, I’d need to investigate that. Before that, I needed to deal with this annoying cabal of pretend archmages.
With that in mind, I reached out to the gestalt to get caught up on what these new troublemakers had been spending their time on. I was hopeful that they’d be minor nuisances and not real threats, but I’d gotten the impression that they were used to getting what they wanted with no regards to the collateral damage they inflicted in the process. It was an attitude I was intimately familiar with myself, after all.
‘Have you discovered anything about their plans?’ I telepathically projected to the gestalt.
‘Nothing you did not already expect,’ came the oddly echoing answer. ‘They are primarily interested in testing you to confirm your capabilities and extracting as much knowledge as possible from you. They have spoken very little on the topic of what exactly they plan to bring to the bargaining table.’
‘Figures. All three of them are currently in their new base?’
‘They are.’
‘And you haven’t noticed anyone else working with them, no fourth archmage in an independent location?’
‘Not on the island, no,’ the gestalt sent. ‘But we believe we may have discovered the team of six in the Ralvost area you’ve asked us to keep an eye on.’
That wasn’t really a surprise. Bakir had told me in our first meeting that they were investigating Ammun’s reemergence. That had been the primary reason I’d cooperated with him, hoping that I could point some more pressure in the old lich’s direction when he finally popped back up.
‘Any idea what they’re working on over there?’ I asked.
‘They seem to have made contact with several of the leaders of the army you chased back into the tower. We were not able to breach the scrying wards they placed around the meeting to verify the contents of their discussions, but all parties left peacefully. Two of the archmages accompanied the army back to the tower itself.’
That wasn’t necessarily a problem, but it wasn’t a good sign. If the Global Order of the Arcane was more interested in advancing its power than it was in preventing Ammun from causing more problems, I could easily find myself facing a united front of both organizations. It might be better to start killing them now while they were still easy pickings.
On the other hand, politics were a thing that existed. If an organization had fifty members, there would be at least two factions, probably more. It was entirely possible that the archmages here were unaware of what their colleagues were doing over by Ammun’s tower, which was something else I needed to look into now. My immediate guess was that they’d been contracted to stabilize the tower before it collapsed, which I doubted they’d be able to manage.
‘Have the ones by the tower had any contact with the local group?’ I asked.
‘Nothing that we have noted.’
‘And it’s not likely that they can communicate through pure telepathy from that sort of distance, not even with an amplifier.’
‘It is not impossible,’ the gestalt argued. ‘But we are extremely sensitive to mental magic. It is unlikely such communication would have escaped our notice if it existed.’
‘Alright. Please continue to watch both groups and let me know if anything develops. I don’t want to be surprised by their next move, especially as it might threaten my allies.’
‘Do not concern yourself. You will know when the situation changes the instant we do,’ the gestalt assured me. We cut the connection, leaving me to ponder what to do about the trio staying on the island.
There weren’t enough puzzle pieces in front of me to put together a solution to this particular problem yet. I needed to know what their goals were and if they could be reasoned with, or if they were going to sell their services to the remnants of Ammun’s legion. I didn’t blame them for exploring their options, but that didn’t mean I’d just let them throw in with my enemies.
I also needed to find out more about their cabal’s political structure. Were the archmages in Ralvost working independently from the rest of them, or were the ones here the odd ones out? It was also possible that they were unified in purpose and trying to play both sides. If I could figure that out, it would be a lot easier to decide on the correct course of action.
But how to do that?
It was like I’d told Senica. Knowledge was the foundation, and magic was my tool of choice. If I didn’t have enough knowledge to make a decision, I knew how to get more. I was already surveilling Bakir’s group through the gestalt, and they were doing their best to keep an eye on the Ralvost team as well. That left one other known group to look into: the rest of the Global Order off-continent.
That would normally be a prohibitive amount of distance, but as luck would have it, I’d come into possession of the ultra-long-range teleportation and scrying magic an ancient cabal had used to reach a moon a thousand years ago. It wouldn’t be a trivial matter to modify it to scry the other side of the world, but it was within my capabilities.
Narrowing my target to a single continent wasn’t nearly precise enough, but I knew someone who could point me in the right direction. The only question was how to get the information out of him. Perhaps it was time to visit the uninvited spies living on my island again.
It might be better to speak to them individually, though. Nevlac was too hostile to be amicable to sharing the information I needed, and Adilar was too clever. Bakir was their weak link, but that was relative. He was still an accomplished mage, even if I didn’t think the title of archmage should really apply to any of them.
That having been said, I was reasonably certain I could separate him from the other two. It would require a bit of preparation, and I would need to ensure Senica was far away from my demesne just in case anything went wrong, but the beginnings of a plan were taking shape in my mind.
Comments
AdHoc
Kind of sad actually to rip away the few years of childhood, when there are a 1000 or so years as an adult to be expected.
Brian
Edit. And besides, I wouldn’t do that king of long-term memory. Should be kind not king. TYFC.
Revenant
Well done, Senica.
Gwalmeich
Senica wants to regain the title of big sister once again. It would be hilarious if she found a way to make herself bigger than Gravin.
