Book 2, Chapter 73

“You have something in mind?” Tetrin asked.

“I’m building something,” I said. “It involves a lot of transmutation and enchantment. Some inscription, too. I can do the work myself, but it’d be easier with some help.”

This whole idea hinged on the man not having any loyalties to his cabal, which wasn’t that far-fetched. I’d need to keep him separate from my new village at first to protect its location until I was sure he wouldn’t try to betray me, but if he truly didn’t care if the rest of the Wolf Pack lived or died, then it was doubtful he’d try to avenge them after the fact.

“Could be something I can help with,” Tetrin said. He eyed up the giant storage crystal I was in the process of shrinking down even now and added, “There’d need to be something in it for me, of course.”

“I doubt I could tempt you with a home,” I said. “You could easily build that yourself, anywhere you want. I don’t imagine the local monsters would be much of a problem.”

“You’d be right about that.”

“But it seems obvious to me that a man like yourself values your crafting skills. You’ve been studying that box of old trinkets Monarch has, haven’t you? I don’t think you were just trying to copy what you found there. Were you trying to learn how it all works, to tease all the secrets of its construction?”

Tetrin leaned back against a workbench and looked me over. His arms were crossed, the tendons stretched taut as he considered me. It would be so easy for him to physically overpower me, and we both knew it. But we also knew that if it came down to a fight, it wouldn’t be the size of our muscles that determined the winner.

“Something like that,” he finally said.

“I know how they work,” I told him. “Each and every one of them. Any question you might think to ask, I have the answer for. How much is it worth to you to have access to that?”

“That’d… be worth quite a bit,” Tetrin admitted. “If you really can deliver.”

I pulled Ash’s flashfire wand out of my phantom space and held it up. “How’s your progress going on replicating this?”

“Not well,” Tetrin said with a scowl. “Inscriptions are inside the core. Hard to get a good look at the runes that way. Best I can do is run mana through them and try to get a feel for it.”

“Any good at divinations?”

“Passable.”

“I’ve got one that’ll help you out here. Rune sight will let you see any inscription with an active flow of mana through it.”

“That’d be helpful.”

Holding a conversation with this man was tiresome. Every word I dragged out of him came reluctantly, but if I could turn him to my side, he’d be useful for years. I didn’t need him to be my friend, just an ally. And if I could unload a lot of low-skill grunt work off on him, so much the better.

“How about this: I’ll teach you that spell right now as a token of good faith. Then I’m off to go pick a fight with your boss. If she wins, you get a useful new spell with no further obligation. If I win, I’ll be back, and we’ll hammer out the details?”

Tetrin spent longer than I thought was necessary turning that over in his mind, but eventually he nodded. “I suppose since you’re taking my mana supply, I might as well get something out of this.”

I finished up the spells I’d wrapped the giant storage crystal in and shrank it down to a stone rod the size of my forearm. It fit quite easily in my phantom space, though only for the next seventy-two hours. I hadn’t wanted to waste the mana with more complicated enchantments that fed off the storage crystal’s own reservoir like I’d done for my staff, but three days was more than enough time to finish my business here now that I was this close to Monarch.

With that done, I said, “Alright, divination. The trick to this spell is that it doesn’t drop information into your mind like a standard divination would. Instead, it shifts your perception to let you physically see something that’s not there. The way we accomplish this is simple…”

*

Tetrin was living proof that the mages here weren’t stupid. They’d just lost access to so much knowledge that was common in my past life. It only took a few minutes to teach him to cast rune sight. As soon as we were done, I got him to confirm some information Haze had given me, and then I was off again.

Without the strong landmark of the gigantic storage crystal to guide me, it was harder to consistently move towards my destination, but I was certain I could still find it. According to both traitors, there was a part of the palace that had been buried underground centuries ago, so long past that no one was quite sure how or why. They called it the Old Grounds, and it only had a single entrance buried deep in the original parts of the palace.

That entrance was a hallway that had broken and fallen down at an angle. Supposedly, mages from generations past had used their magic to shape a staircase there and stabilized the hallway itself to prevent its collapse, but it hardly mattered to me. If I needed to dig my way back down there, I would. I had the mana for it right now.

Tetrin had also given me a warning that Haze hadn’t. The Hierophant’s personal quarters were deep in the palace and not so far from the Old Grounds. Those rare elites equipped with draw stone shields I’d fought earlier would be commonplace where I needed to go, and his guard also included several powerful mages, at least by Wolf Pack standards.

Unless the Hierophant was secretly Monarch in disguise, I didn’t have any reason to fight them. Though, now that I thought about it, it wouldn’t surprise me if they were the same person. She obviously thought of herself as the self-styled ruler of not only Derro, but this entire island. They considered mana a currency here, and they were taxing practically everyone for as much as they could get.

I was following a path I’d charted out that led mostly in the right direction when one of my scry spells broke. I paused to consider that for a moment and decided that I’d likely found the Hierophant’s chambers. I’d probably triggered some ward I hadn’t seen with the weaker spells I was using to map out the overly-large palace.

Most of the place wasn’t even used. Whatever Derro had been when it was first built, it held only a tiny fraction of the population it was capable of housing, and that included the palace itself. Once I’d broken free of the heavily-populated outer areas, things had actually been quiet for me. It wasn’t that I expected the peace to last, but I still had to suppress an annoyed sigh when I sensed two distinct sources of mana coming in my direction.

A pair of mages dressed in identical red robes with the hoods pulled low to help conceal their faces swept into the hallway. They both already had spells prepared, and they unleashed them as soon as they saw me. The first sent a chilling wave of cold down the room that left a trail of frost behind it, but which broke apart against my shield ward.

The second followed it up with a ranged version of paralyzing grasp, one that sacrificed strength for reach. That also failed to hit me, and I responded with a set of flame lances. Mana shields flashed into existence around them just in time to block the attacks, but those had been a diversion anyway. I caught one of them in greater telekinesis while they were distracted, then slammed them into the stone wall to stun them.

The mage’s mana shield flashed once, then again when I directed them up into the ceiling, then gave out when I slammed them back into the ground. All three impacts took less than a second and ended with the sickening crunch of breaking bones.

That particular mage looked to be out of the fight, though not quite dead yet. I ignored them for now to focus on taking care of the other mage. Someone was scrying on the fight, and whoever it was, I didn’t want them seeing more of my capabilities than necessary. Nor did I want them pinning down my location and sending reinforcements.

Unfortunately, the second mage had used that sliver of time well and prepared to block my attack. Greater telekinesis slid off of them, unable to get a hold as they countered the magic. The spell was too expensive to just brute force a grab, but I could keep it up for a few seconds while I peppered them with force bolts.

It turned out this mage, while competent enough, wasn’t able to defend against so many attacks at once, and didn’t have any sort of shield ward to compensate for that. They avoided being smacked into the walls, but took three force bolts to the chest. It was a good thing those robes were already red, because there was a lot of blood leaking out of their bodies.

More mana sources were pouring into the edge of my perception now, too many to casually deal with. Unless I wanted to get bogged down in another resource-draining fight, it was time to leave. Before I could, the first mage waved a hand in my direction, and a hollow pillar of ice shot up from the ground, encircling me.

As a prison, it wouldn’t do much more than stall me for a second. Conjurations were precisely the wrong type of magic to use for any sort of long-term capture, anyway. I broke through it with a force wave, sending the shattered ice flying in every direction. Then I started casting the spell that would execute the two mages so I could leave unchallenged.

Before I could even decide what attack would work best, a tall, thin man ran into the hallway. He was dressed in robes of white with red trim and had a rather stupid-looking hat perched on his head. Something he was wearing must have been shielding his mana fully, because I hadn’t sensed him at all. “Stop, stop!” he cried. “Please, don’t hurt them.”

“Sorry, but I’m not sticking around to wait for their friends to show up.”

“This is a mistake,” the man said. “They were just trying to stop an intruder, to protect me, but you don’t need to kill them.”

“And you are?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“I’m the Hierophant,” he said. He pointed up at his hat. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“And… why shouldn’t I kill you?”

“Because I know why you’re here,” he declared. “You’re going after Monarch.”

“So?”

“I want to help.”

Was this some sort of trap? I understood why Haze had betrayed the Wolf Pack. It was that or her life. I could sort of see why Tetrin would turn his back on them. His was a relationship of convenience. They had the mana; he wanted the mana. But now a third person?

“Why?” I asked.

“It’s simple. I want my city back. Forty years ago, that damned cabal got their fangs into Derro’s throat, and we couldn’t dislodge them. They’ve held us hostage to their whims. The enforcers are loyal to the Wolf Pack instead of the government now. They replaced our currency with those mana-consuming stones. Everything has gotten worse since they arrived. I’ve wanted them gone for decades, but nobody could stand up to them back when they first showed up, and they’re even stronger now.”

“But I can,” I said, finishing the thought for him. “Okay, fine. You want them dead. I want them dead. How can you help?”