Book 3, Chapter 38

Our typical pattern of flying around looking for interesting places, had served us well for months, but now we were starting to see small towns popping up all over. Even though I deliberately steered us away from the roads, there were enough isolated villages that only ever got news of the outside world from the mouths of peddlers with donkeys and overstuffed backpacks that it quickly became impossible to thread our way through them without risking being seen.

I very much did not want to be seen. There was no doubt in my mind that my treatment of the two Lightbearers would be condemned by the ruling government of the Sanctum of Light. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if they managed to scry back to the city to let them know what had happened, which could easily result in us being outnumbered by a group of pursuers hailing from what appeared to be the most magically advanced civilization left on the planet.

I’d been sorely tempted to kill them, but the consequences of that might have been even worse if their society was as magically advanced as those two women’s memories indicated.

“Why did you interrogate them, then?” Mother asked that night after we explained what we’d learned.

Senica snorted quietly in the background. “Yeah, Gravin. Why?”

“I told you what the purpose of this journey was before I left,” I explained. “This is a continuation of that. I suspect this tower holds the secrets to exactly what happened when my idiot apprentice broke the world. The location fits, and if what I’m guessing is true, it sounds like the city was built to provide him with all the mana he needed to sustain his undead form.”

“You think he’s still alive, so to speak?” Mother asked.

“Oh, I very much doubt it. I do think this was his attempt at it, but I can’t imagine he succeeded. If he had, I think this world would be a very different place. A living, or unliving, Ammun Nescect would have had thousands of years to try to fix this mess and the strongest possible motivation to do so. If he was still walking around, I’d have seen the signs.”

People who were willing to embrace undeath just to keep going once their life extension spells finally failed did not take the idea of being destroyed lightly. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that breaking the world core had been an accident and that Ammun had done everything in his power to rectify it once he’d realized what had happened.

Obviously, he’d failed, but I wasn’t operating under the same burdens he was. For one thing, I didn’t need an entire city just to keep me alive. That gave me a lot more time to devote to problem solving. For another, well, there was a reason I was the master in my relationship with Ammun. He had not been among my most impressive students. I could scarcely credit him the achievements that were linked to his name and had pondered more than once if history had twisted some facts.

“What comes next?” Mother asked. “And will Senica be safe with you?”

“For now, yes. This trip has been good for her, and I don’t have any intention of cutting it short. We move so fast that I doubt anyone is going to catch up to us. I also have my doubts that anyone from the city is going to be that much stronger than the cabal mages from the Wolf Pack. There will just be more people at that same level of strength.”

“It’s fine, Mom,” Senica said as she plopped down in front of the mirror next to me. “I’m actually looking forward to seeing the super magic tower. Can you even imagine mana so thick it just fills the air? Gravin said he’d teach me how to syphon it into my core and process it for use. Unlimited mana! I’d get so much practicing done.”

“There is that,” Mother said, but I could sense her reluctance. She cared more about her little girl being safe than being a powerful mage, but Senica was old enough now to have her own goals and dreams.

“We’re safe,” I assured Mother. “And if that ever changes, we can be back home in literally five minutes.”

While that wasn’t strictly true, as teleportation did have a maximum range, I’d left a trail of beacons hidden along our route, and I had more than enough mana to chain the two or three spells we’d need to return to Sanctuary.

“Sometimes trouble doesn’t give you five minutes,” Mother said.

“True enough, but I’ve yet to see anything out here that would even remotely challenge me. There have only been a handful of monsters that Senica couldn’t defeat unaided.”

“It’s true. I’m pretty strong like that,” Senica put in.

That didn’t seem to reassure Mother, judging by the flat look on her face. Sensing that there was nothing left to be gained in this conversation, I moved to change the topic. “Did Hyago drop off the latest numbers?”

“Hmm? Oh, yes, I believe so. I have the paper around here somewhere. Just a moment,” she said as she stood up and stepped out from in front of the mirror.

“Nice,” Senica said softly out of the side of her mouth.

The corner of my lips twitched, but I had my expression back under control before Mother sat back down. She glanced at the paper once before holding it up for me to read and asked, “This is what you wanted?”

“Yes,” I said. I scanned the numbers quickly, did a few mental calculations of my own, and said, “Thank you. That was all I needed to see.”

Mother looked down at the paper again and asked, “What do they mean?”

“Well, that’s a bit complicated, but the basics is that the goal is to fill the entire valley with mana, to simulate what the world was like thousands of years ago. To do that, we need the trees healthy enough that they’re producing more mana than they use. That way, their cores will fill and they’ll shed the unused mana into the air, where it’ll be contained by the enchantments Tetrin and I set up.

“These numbers are the measurements Hyago is taking for me on specific trees we’ve been keeping track of. They’re going up, but less each week. I’m afraid that if we don’t find a way to change it, the experiment will be a failure.”

Mother gave up with a shake of her head. “I still don’t understand these numbers and charts, but I get what you’re trying to accomplish. If things are going that poorly, are you going to be returning soon to make changes?”

“No, that’ll be up to Hyago. I’m sure he’ll figure something out.”

“That is what you pay him for,” Senica said.

I laughed. “True enough.”

Our conversation turned from business to catching up after that. Eventually, Father came home and joined Mother at the mirror. He added his own commentary to the local events, which included a sudden, unexpected marriage and a bride showing early signs of pregnancy not a month later and another request for help from Ghalin that had just come in today.

“More monsters?” I asked. I doubted the number chasing after the brakvaw eyries was shrinking, but I would have thought they had things under control.

“No, something else. Giant birds attacked the village. They sounded like those ones you made a deal with a year ago,” Father said.

Senica started to say something, but paused, rethought it, and closed her mouth. It didn’t take magic to know we were both thinking the same thing. I’d hoped that by killing the dissenting element in their society, I’d nipped future problems with the brakvaw early. Perhaps I’d been too optimistic.

I didn’t care much about Ghalin one way or another, but I didn’t need brakvaw aerial assaults on the Sanctuary. They were one of the few creatures capable of threatening the sheltered valley if they ever found it. Perhaps I would be taking a break to return home sooner than anticipated after all.

“Keep me updated on any news about that,” I said. “I might have to step in.”

“You think it’s that serious?” Father asked.

“I don’t know. I thought I was on good terms with the brakvaw leader. It might be a few rogue birds, or something might have changed. We don’t need those creatures attacking our home. Do me a favor and ask Tetrin to doublecheck the maintenance on the village’s aerial cannons.”

“We have aerial cannons?” Mother asked.

“Yes,” I said. I was well aware that avian monsters were the biggest threat to the valley and had worked with Tetrin to build a few powerful defenses, but against the brakvaw, I wasn’t sure they’d be lethal enough to get the job done.

“What’s an aerial cannon?” Senica asked.

“Device that shoots lines of concentrated fire into the air with a range of about a thousand feet. If they’re working properly, they’ll pick out targets on their own and can pull information about hostile creatures to target from the ward stone network.”

“Oh, are those the black metal poles you planted everywhere?” Father asked, snapping his fingers.

“No, those are something else,” I said. “They monitor activity in the ground for burrowing threats. The cannons are the orbs on the corners of the house.”

“I had no idea we had so many magical defenses,” Mother said, somewhat taken aback. “Why not just use a ward stone like we did back in the village?”

“These are for… stronger threats,” I explained. “They shouldn’t ever be necessary, but I was hardly going to leave our home undefended while I’m gone.”

I couldn’t tell if my parents were unsettled or reassured by that statement, but either way, they’d be safe. Most of the defenses drew their mana from the village’s mana battery, so there was very little risk of them running dry even if an entire flock of brakvaw descended on Sanctuary. Now, the defenses being enough to repel that invasion was a different story, but they should be strong enough to hold anything back for the few minutes needed for me to return to personally deal with a threat.

“As I said, please follow up on the Ghalin situation and let me know if things escalate,” I said. Father nodded his agreement, and that was the last we spoke on that topic.

An hour later, when I severed the scrying connection and stowed the mirror away, Senica asked, “Do you think it was our fault?”

“The brakvaw thing? Not even a little bit,” I said.

“But we killed those three brakvaw.”

“First of all, I killed them. You are completely innocent there. Second, they attacked us, and when you behave like that, getting killed is a risk you run. Fighting back was simple self-defense, and no one would condemn us for that.”

“The other brakvaw might,” she said quietly.

“I… Well, fair enough. What do you think we should do, then?”

“If it’s our fault for killing the brakvaw that attacked us, then we need to go back and set things right. You were friends with their leader. Could you talk to him?”

“It’s a bit of a risk to go there in person,” I said. “Fighting three of them at once is one thing, fighting hundreds is a completely different task.”

Even as I said that, I considered what I’d need to do a projection spell from this distance. It was doable, just barely, but once I added the wards I’d need to keep the projection from being traced back, things got a lot harder. The amount of prep time was so ludicrous that it would probably be easier to just teleport somewhere closer and project my mind to Eyrie Peak without wards.

I shook my head. “Something to consider if the situation worsens. One attack does not mean the brakvaw are on the warpath.”

“It doesn’t mean they’re not, either,” Senica pointed out. “People could die.”

“And if Mother or Father are sent to Ghalin to investigate, I’ll show some concern about that.”

“What if Juby went?”

“What if he did? Is Juby important to you?”

“Shut up! You know he is.”

I sighed. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

“Not until you know it’s not our fault and that nobody’s going to get hurt.”

“Fine. I’ll start working on it,” I said. “Happy now?”

“Yes,” she said smugly.

Big sisters could be a real pain sometimes.