Hlaeth Chapter 54 – Lichdom Isn’t all it’s Cracked up to Be

« Chapter 53 | Index | Chapter 55 »

Yes, the necromancers here were experienced in magical combat, with all the tricks and plays mages used against one another, but they hadn’t been prepared for the simple, overwhelming force I’d plied against them, going through their defenses instead of around them, or bringing such down explosively around them.

Their one attempt to ambush me had cost three of them their cursed existences in the first five explosive seconds of the spell battle, and that had broken them. The rest had fled as quickly as possible to their own lairs to await their dooms. This one, formerly a female by the looks of things, had retreated to the central tower of the magical Academy, the formerly white stones twisted and blackened, weeping from the negative energies that had infused the place now. They were Burning whitely behind me as I’d blazed my way through this magical Academy’s defenses and defenders, leaving the unwhite necrotao flames of vivus feasting everywhere behind me.

The stone of the tower was disintegrating, falling into ruin after I poured vivic fire into the place, and sand had begun to reign where stone once had… which was everywhere. The Yellowed sunlight was coming into the heart of the place as the stone fell apart into whiteness, letting light in where darkness had ruled for centuries.

We didn’t pause in the spellcasting to catch our breath so much as to take stock of the situation.

She’d been an Archmage, I could Assay that much, which meant access to true Valence IX’s. I’d been waiting for those, and ripped countermagic into them, or direct assaults on her, even as she spun them. Wardflashes and explosive Spellflares had done for most of her contingent and hanging spells, leaving her robes and bones smoking with the explosive feedback. She was looking at me and finding a remarkable lack of anything other than the simplest defensive spells to prey on in return, and all of those I had Sieged up and could reform in a heartbeat or two.

“Why are you here?” she asked, the dark lights inside her skull studying the Burning stone behind me, the shifting and rumbling of the Academy’s higher entry chambers collapsing as they bathed in unwhite fires. The hate and fear did not escape her voice. She had not expected to ever have to deal with someone so capable of fighting necromancy. “If it is the secrets of the Towers you wish for, take them and go! The paltry wealth means nothing to me! I can see your brand… which of the Circles do you serve? Greed?”

She thought my soulscar was a Hellbrand? That was useful to know. There was nothing that said I had to be honest with a lich, or at even forthright. “Wealth is a tool to an end. Power is a tool to an end. Secrets are a tool to an end. It is time for an ending, and you have no tools to forestall it.” My, wasn’t I the pompous poet.

“I have a Compact with Horreigenspel!” she spat out, fingers of bone and empowered sinew coming up in desperation, preparing final spells, devastating things that would pluck at the very foundations of this fallen school, bury everything, perhaps while her soul fled to her Phylactery, the soul-cleaving crutch that kept her in unlife, hidden away somewhere safely… or perhaps not so safely. My soulscar blazed as I felt the presence of hellfire. “Cross me, and you cross he and his masters! I have served them for centuries, and the debt they owe me is great!”

I filed the name away. “Time in the Hells is measured on the clock of eternity. There is only the brief blip of life before death, and the eternal doom thereafter for the weak. Your Pact-maker’s masters are the concern of greater forces than I, and certainly than you, and your ‘service’ is nothing more than a gnat’s span of rent paid towards the final payment of your soul.”

The shadows exploded with vivic fire as the necrotao flames I’d been shepherding collapsed on the undead blackness that had been gathering in the edges of the room, igniting it like dried leaves and devouring it with unceasing hunger. The last of her servants fell away to wherever shadows go, definitely not under my heels. Like eerie webs, threads of vivic fire began to creep across the room and towards her, following the trail of negative energy, the latent power of her collapsing Wards, feeding on the corruption and the Taint, and moving down toward the center of the web.

Her defenses weren’t defending her, they were feeding her doom!

“You’re trying to blow the primary Wards out of the tower and collapse the place. I will inform you that that is not going to happen. Your ties to the Wards are obvious and infused with necromantic power, the same power that defied the coming of the Yellow. Vivic fire has been feeding on them for some time. At the instant you send out your power to take them apart, the vivic fire will simply feed on the energy and pour it into the Wards, making them even stronger… and, of course, that energy is Attuned to me, meaning every instant we stand here, my control over the Wards of this place grows.”

The tables, chairs, and stairsteps of this central chamber, probably once the main meeting hall and auditorium of the whole Academy of magic, were popping into necrotao flames, one by one. I imagined that there’d been a lot of students claimed by the wave of undeath that had exploded out of this place and claimed the city. Yes, that fact was readily apparent just by tracing the levels of negative energy and bringing them back to their place of origin. This place was literally screaming with sudden death and betrayal. The deaths of the students had probably been the sacrifice catalyzing the greater spell that had taken the entire city into undeath!

“I trust your centuries of unlife and power were adequate payment for your betrayal of your school, your students, and the citizens of this city,” I went on, coming down towards her, vivic flames billowing up around Mortus Dius and I. “The city is Burned unwhite, you realize. I’ve got Earth Elementals out there, and Elementals of vivic flame, called up to undertake the Duty of Fire and turn this mausoleum and necropolis into a big white stain on the Land that not even the Yellow is going to be able to do anything about. Thoroughness is a good thing, you see. My Patron appreciates not having to do the job twice. A little debt collection, a little evening of the ledgers… a lot of wasted study time. Because, you know, knowledge that you can’t pass on is wasted from the moment it’s discovered.

“No one remembers you or this place, lich. Steps have been taken to ensure that. You might well be one of the most powerful creatures on this world, and no one knows you exist. All you’ve learned and become is going to be dust on the wind, and the only ones who know are the ones who already know all about you… the ones you sold life and light to, long, long ago, and who already know everything you call secret.

“You are nothing to them. You’ve never been anything to them, and you never will be. You’re a withered soul who supped on the largesse of Hell, and it’s time for you to pay the cost of your meal. Are you ready?” Cue the dramatic stand-off music as the Sublime Chord began to swell with Truth, Hope, and Valor! “I bring your Last Day! Prepare to Feed the Land!” Hey, I just have to...

She tried a surge of will towards the Wards, and the vivic flames in the room doubled instantly in height. They began to race down towards her even faster, and the Force screen she put up to keep them at bay.

I threw Mortus Dius out, spinning end over end, and smashed him into the Force Wall protecting her.

She screeched as Argent Mastery shattered the Force Magic like fine glass, the lash of feedback disrupting whatever concentration she had been whelming. The wave of vivic fire billowed up and over and came crashing down on her like a living thing, spurred on by my will.

She didn’t die instantly, but she died quickly enough. She couldn’t get any more spells off while her negative life energy was cooked off her preserved bones, billowed up around the edges of her spirit, and for a moment I could see the cruel beauty and sneering hunger that had dominated her while she was alive. A red lash wound around her twisted spirit, burrowing into her heart, but it, too, was Burning, drawing yet more screams and a sense of distant anger from whatever had wrought the Branding. I memorized the form of it quickly.

She had embraced undeath, reveled into it, and there’d be no afterlife for her spirit. That was good, as the amount of Evil this one had done had benefited the Hells enough. Didn’t need them to get her spirit and see what they could make out of it, as True Death fed back along the ties she had to her Phylactery and Burned it wherever it was, too!

There was a brief explosion of blackness, a desperate welling of power along the lines of the school’s Wards, which I met head on with an infusion of vivic fire. Every rock in the place and the air about the school’s ruined towers lit up with a flare of white and black as the two energies warred out along the matrix of the Rune structure, and Light blazed in the ruins of the fallen city as it had not for centuries on end.

I strode down to the main podium and toe-flipped Mortus Dius back up to my hand from the great swathe of white flowing out from the center of the chamber. I eyed the fine particulate dust at the center of the white, then scattered it with a delicate breeze from my Ring Primus.

A single platinum Ring winked up at me, with a star sapphire of clear, deep sky blue inset. The rest of the Gear on her had been so drenched with necromantic power it had Burned away and been fed into the school’s Wards as raw energy with the rest of her.

I’d sensed the presence of a Ring on her immediately, of course, and shut it down so it couldn’t be used against me, as was the right of a Ringlord. Reach plucked it up Telekinetically, lifted it up before my empty eyes, and I inspected it coolly.

Well. An unsecured high-level magical item. Phat lewt, as the gamer terms went. This thing was strongly tied to the Element of Air, beyond even normal Elemental Command. What a necromancer was doing with it probably had more to do with a sign of prestige than any real power. An artifact this valuable and powerful was likely a school heirloom or a prized treasure, not to be given up for anything less than something of equal power more closely tied to the interests of the wearer.

The other undead magi hadn’t worn such a geegaw, but they hadn’t been Archmages, either. I presumed it was rank-related, and unless there was another Master around that had escaped my attentions, I’d not be finding another so readily.

Which didn’t mean there wasn’t another such item around, it just meant that whoever had it likely had not been in on the whole turn-the-city-to-undead plan, and had probably wound up dead as a result. The other Ruling Rings were supposed to be in the other fallen mage-holds...

Regardless, I now had the rest of the place to search, and to see what else I might find that could be useful. Wahoo, solo exploration through a cleaned-out, ancient magical school and repository of magical knowledge. Everyone at home would be going wild with envy!...

« Chapter 53 | Index | Chapter 55 »