Orykson's Duties

One of the timers that was normally hidden in Aerde’s spirit appeared in the Layered Visual Output spell that Aerde and Orykson shared. It hit zero, and an alarm blared within the display for a moment before ticking over to another, much shorter counter, this one only measuring a few weeks. 

“Have they?” Orykson asked. Before he could even finish vocalizing the thought, Aerde sent a divinatory spell out. When it returned negative, Orykson nodded slowly. He rose to his feet and had Aerde begin scanning through information at a prodigious rate, lending his spiritual weight to the process of analyzing thousands of streams of information at once. 

While Aerde turned his focus to battle preparation and hacking the complex nest of thousands of wards, Orykson focused on reorganizing the locations of his spatial pockets, demiplanes, and scant few astral planes. Many of his new research projects, like the ephemeral beehive, the soul-cauldron, the rough sketch idea for hudau mana that he intended to suggest to Malachi, the deepcycle array, and more besides needed to be tucked away. Many of them were still in the prototype stage, not directly useful in combat, or some combination of both. As such, he allowed their connections to manifest in attached spatial anchors plugged into the enchantment arrays within his castle, leaving them behind for another day.

He began replacing those with more combat oriented planes, moving them to be easier to access with less dramatic shifts of mana manipulation. While a few of them contained more esoteric projects, enchantments, and stolen loot, others were obvious, like his spell-storage vault or his collection of bones for pinpoint boneshard and bone spears. That caused him to pause. The next time he instructed Malachi in death magic, he needed to hammer some instruction into the child’s thick skull about the spell. He was still using cow bones, and hadn’t even saturated them with enough death energy to bring them to third gate. It was no wonder the spell was underperforming.

Aerde’s magic completed, the spirit created a flickering blue and white path, and Orykson vanished. He teleported, turned to take a half-step to the left, vanished again, repositioned himself, drew his Title in close, flew through a tight nest of wardsigns, flexed his spirit, vanished again, and then stepped out of the corner of the powerfully warded room in the heart of Lledrith. The room was filled with the humming power of his target’s title, and the instant Orykson appeared, they turned to face him calmly, a smile on their lips. Orykson shook his head. 

“It won’t work.” 

“Orykson, I respect your intellect,” the Knowledge King said. “I understand that the degradation is a factor. I don’t deny that. But I do deny that I have begun to degrade enough for me to begin raising someone else to become the Knowledge King.”

Aerde spoke, though the spirit kept his communication entirely through their link, not vocalising anything. 

“The King is suppressing me on all fronts. Information bombs are obscuring conventional models, destiny is being paid to actively alter the proper course of the future, and my mana is growing slower. My personal power and unique nature is the only reason I am even still awake. As is, I do not anticipate being of any further help outside of the subconscious effects of our bond.” 

That was concerning. Not that he would be unable to rely on Aerde’s predictive modeling for the fight – it was a useful tool, but a tool was all it was. He didn’t rely on it for a crutch. No, the concerning thing was that the Knowledge King was so far gone that they’d start wielding their power so directly against him. 

“Don’t make me kill you,” Orykson said. It wasn’t a threat, nor a promise, nor even a statement of abject fact. It was tired. He liked this particular Knowledge King, as far as such things went. He’d hoped they’d have already picked out an heir to pass their knowledge and power to, but as long as they began the process before the next timer ran down, the should be fine. 

“I can undo the geas we–” 

For a half a second, he was tempted, but he shook his head. Previous Knowledge Kings had tried to offer him the same thing, and he’d denied them. 

“Not we. That was a previous Knowledge King. Is your sense of self already so decayed you’re placing yourself in the shoes of your predecessors?” 

That actually caused the Knowledge King to rock back slightly, their eyes widening, but Orykson didn’t react yet. There was a certain arrogance that came with the adopting a King title, as he knew well. Until Orykson could prove himself capable of backing up the threat, the memories of prior Knowledge Kings wouldn’t be enough. 

Sure enough, the Knowledge King spat a single word. It was a Word That Wasn’t, a Word which was unable to be constrained by the power of the monolinguistic spell. The same language that appeared over the Sepulchers, and on the library’s motto. Though the word was not translated, nor could it ever be, it was perfectly understandable all the same: End. 

This particular Word of Power spell contained the weight of an incredibly powerful Truth, Dominion, and Authority of Endings within it, and it was further fueled by the Knowledge King’s Title, and it crashed down on Orykson like a hurricane against the sea coast.

Orykson’s current Title, the Analyst, was a mutual title, shared with Aerde in a similar manner to how Elio planned to mingle the Terminarch in with Idyll’s own, or how the Sun and Moon Queens had intermingled their own Titles. With Aerde out of commission, it was more like wielding a rough, uncut, and unpolished Title crystal than it was the precision instrument that he was used to. There would be virtually no way that he could resist the Knowledge King’s title, let alone the temporary power of the Word of Power. Worse yet, the Knowledge King had burnt a drop of Destiny, infusing it into the attack. A drop could permanently empower a mana-garden, even for someone like him, and all of that magical potency went into this refinement. The magic slammed into Orykson, an attempt to end his life, end his research, end his continual progress. 

He stepped through it, tearing through the magic like it was wet paper. 

“How?” the Knowledge King said, spluttering. “You didn’t even resist the magic!”

“I was never one for following the rules,” Orykson said in a lazy drawl. As he spoke, he was careful to project a look of complete confidence and command, not showing just how close that shave had really been. If it had managed to slip past his Magi Mandate, then even if it wouldn’t have been enough to kill him, it certainly would have destroyed this body, and it might have resonated with enough power to destroy his soul vessel. He had plans for that, but it would be inconvenient, especially as he preferred people to think destroying it would kill him, as it would with inferior liches. 

He took one step forward. 

The Knowledge King spread their hands, and enchanted items began to fly across the room. An enchanted wand turret from Craftsman, dragon’s breath Headmaster, and defensive arrays from the Wardsmith joined with older artifacts, ones that had been reprogrammed and tuned up with the Knowledge King’s magic, like a sword from the Forge, a soul-devouring elixir from the Refiner, and a suit of armor from the Shieldsman. 

Their combined power exploded, filling the warded room with light and power. It dissolved all of the paperwork, evaporated the desk, turned the art on the walls to ash, and scoured the stone down to the enchantments. 

Orykson slipped into a demiplane, evading the powerful attacks. The power of the artifacts tore apart the demiplane, so he slipped into another one, sliding from miniature realm to realm like a ghost. As he moved, he created more anchors, and then stepped out into the room, holding up his hand. A new storage space bloomed into existence, and all of the artifacts vanished, teleported within, even as Orykson melded the new space with one of his armories. 

He took another step forward. 

“Give those back!” the Knowledge King shouted. 

But Orykson could see their fear. The powerful mage was trembling now, and they took a step back, drawing on power that was buried deep within the library, spread across a dozen different sources. A massive bomb of information, chaotic and nonsensical, half of it drawn from sources that fell from the stars, smashed into Orykson’s mind. He neatly sorted it, placing what useful information he could into mental files for Aerde to process later, as biological enchantments carved into his skull diverted the rest, breaking it down into knowledge energy that would slowly cycle into his brain. 

“No no no no no!” the Knowledge King shouted, stepping back. “This is impossible! You should be dead! All of my models said any one of these attacks would at least kill this body. You treat bodies like cheap tools, disposing of them as needed.” 

He took a third step forward. He was close enough to reach out and touch the Knowledge King now. 

“Well, your models were half right,” Orykson agreed. “Now, let’s see if you’ve managed to model my offensive powers correctly.” 

He spread his arms wide, like a leader addressing a flock of people, and portals snapped open on either side of his hands. Each one contained ten spears made of bone, carved with enchantments up and down the shaft, saturated in natural arrays, and reinforced with his recent discovery of an alchemical bone-reinforcement solution. These weren’t the mass-enchanted weapons meant for his retired skeletal legion, nor were they the slightly moderate quality ones that he used when firing barrages of hundreds at once. Each and every one of these bone spears were weapons that would be suitable for an Occultist or fresh Magi to use as a personal weapon.

The Knowledge King flung their hands out, and tried to rewrite the targeting portions of his spells, getting them to swap so that they aimed at him. Orykson spun a thread of soul mana through the connected network enchantments that were coordinating the spears, and slammed his weakened Title against the King’s. He wasn’t strong enough to crush their Title, but he didn’t need that. He only needed to buy a tenth of a second, and he was more than strong enough for that. 

The Knowledge King spoke another Word of Power, once more drawing on ninth gate power to grant the Word an Authority, which manifested as a crackling defensive barrier interposing itself between the spears and their body. With the Knowledge King's Title further infused into the Authority, the first spear came to a dead stop, slamming into the shimmering dome before falling to the ground, as did the second. The third, fourth, and fifth were all stopped, knocked askew to slam into the walls. The sixth cracked the shield before knocking it aside, and the seventh caused the cracks to spread further across the dome. The eighth shattered it, but lost momentum and fell to the ground. 

The ninth through the twentieth spears slammed into the Knowledge King’s body, precisely calibrated so that they didn’t instantly kill the King. They severed limbs, skewered organs, left long, lacerating cuts, and carved out one eye. It was severe enough that a mortal would die within a tenth of a second from the shock. Even with the Knowledge King’s advancement, and a quickly spoken Word of Power wrapping themselves in the Truth and Dominion of Durability they weren’t a beast or a true body mage. They’d be lucky to live for three seconds. 

Orykson didn’t need that long.

He wasn’t a healer, but his focuses in life magic were summoning and biological modifications, and the latter did have some overlap. It was enough to let him cast a spell of life and death that forced the Knowledge King’s vital functions to remain active, while tethering their soul to their body. The pressure that had been keeping Aerde contained vanished, and the spirit immediately began giving Orykson a status report. 

He ignored it, flipping his hand up into the air as he stepped in view of the Knowledge King’s one good eye. All twenty of the spears floated into the air and began to rotate above the King in a shifting icosagram pattern, making it obvious that if the Knowledge King's mana so much as flickered, he would kill them.

“It’s time for a new Knowledge King. You’re slipping.” 

“You’re right,” the Knowledge King said, and from the tenor of their voice and the feel in the air, Orykson could tell their Title had less hold over them. “I’ll start training a replacement as soon as I’m healed. They’ll be ready before the next Tournament. Not the Zuanzhe one – the one that’ll be held here in Elohi.” 

“You have three weeks to begin training them,” Orykson said. “Or you know what happens."

The Knowledge King knew too well. After all, they'd been the one to create this arrangement with him. His warning delivered, he punched out with his spatial mana, shattering the wards around the library with raw power. Another small reminder that he could break through their detection subtly, or with raw power.

He and the Knowledge King appeared before the Healer, who was in the middle of a meeting. Orykson dropped the bloody sack of meat that was the Knowledge King's body on the table, and nodded to the Healer. The instant the winged man’s caladrius magic began to soak into the Knowledge King and restore them, Orykson let his Forced Life spell dissolve, then vanished back to Mossford.