The Lich King Reincarnates as a Baby

++One quality Isabel Vornholt always showed in those early days was a certain, vigorous courage. Or…no. Courage is the wrong word. By all accounts she did not experience fear in the way normal people do. To her, life seemed to be some great game. There were bad moves and good moves, and the occasional optimal move, and she would never let petty emotion get in the way of a winning strategy.++

- Commentary by Maria Voret. 1,938 A.E.

My problem: the enemy was approaching fast. I could finalize my defenses in another month or so, finish setting up and training men to use my magical cannons, have Sethira fully mine the whole area around the refinery, a hundred other small changes that would heighten my odds. But that would take time. Additionally, the enemy was attacking with such overwhelming numbers that I did not think it would make a difference anyway.

Fortunately, I had certain advantages of my own to let me offset this. The enemy was, after all, moving on foot and en masse. I could fly by myself.

My biggest obstacle was simply navigating towards the enemies without giving my position away. In the end I solved this rather basically, by just climbing several miles into the sky and holding a sheet of vaguely sky-coloured aether below me as I flew. The aether slowed me by catching the air and forcing me to expend more energy countering drag, but at a distance it would hopefully make me stand out less. Meanwhile there was a wide viewing port for my head, allowing me to gaze out and scan the landscape for any large forces of marching humans.

Sometimes, it is the simplest tricks that work the best.

One hundred leagues was a large area, but fortunately I was able to narrow down the possible locations of my enemies by mapping out the towns in which they were sighted, then making a few educated guesses based on probable movement speeds and terrain quality. It only took me an hour to find the first group.

Blakely had, if anything, been understating things. There were a solid thousand men in just this one group, and unlike in a real army they did not need to delineate their magicians via brightly coloured uniforms. Laws of war did not apply to private engagements like this.

That also meant, however, that I had free rein myself to be as violent and extreme as I pleased. Today was a good day.

I kept high at first, just letting myself drift slowly until I was almost directly above the enemy. Only then did I allow my aether to disintegrate and turn my flight into a dive.

I had never moved straight down with gravity’s assistance before, and the effect was rather underwhelming. Compared to the strength of my own propulsive magic, the extra acceleration just was not noticeable. This did at least mean that I was well used to the speed I approached with.

By the time I was half a mile from them, I had already finished forming up a new construct of aether, this one long and heavy with a rounded top to cut through the air. I let go of it just three hundred paces above the ground and veered forwards out of my dive to let it fall down past me.

Aether could be flexible and springy, but this projectile was hard and stiff. When it landed, all several tonnes of it striking faster than the sound of its falling, the energy shattered it violently enough to send fragments flying out like shrapnel from a bomb. I turned back as I gazed skyward, and smiled at the sight of many dozens of men torn practically limb from limb.

Unfortunately, I already saw magic flaring up around the survivors now. From my altitude I had not been able to make out the glow of innate power, but now that it was in use it was as clear to me as daylight. Shields were already forming up, and hostile energies coiling in anticipation for an attack. I prepared my own for a second run.

Magicians can do many things. Defending and attacking at once is somewhat challenging, but perfectly achievable for a mature adult with training and practice. Forming powerful projectiles that are fast and accurate enough to hit a human-sized target tearing through the air at hundreds of miles per hour is significantly harder, but there are still quite a few magic users who can achieve it, and of course many mediocre ones using massed fire can stumble onto the same effect.

Defending while mustering projectiles that can defeat a magician’s defenses, then aiming them at a flying, human-sized object tearing through the sky above at hundreds of miles per hour with the sun at her back? Even I would have struggled to do that, and it was clearly too much of an act for the talentless sludge firing on me from below. I smiled as the bolts of magic ripped through the skies around me, each missing by yards at least. I waited a moment to close in and line up my own shot, then released it.

Raining aether down, liquid this time. Oily, sticky sludge that fell in great clumps to fall and stick to whatever it splashed. A moment of confusion rippled through the men, though I noted several—probably the magicians—were already panicking in realisation at what was coming.

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Then I banked back up out of my dive and threw a jet of flame down, rising just in time to get myself clear of the resulting fireball as my flammable aether caught the sparks and went up all at once.

I gained more height, adding a tilt to my trajectory and sending myself further north as I flew. Even with that adjustment a handful of attacks came dangerously close to reaching me.

That was enough from this attack, I decided. Looking back down at the ground I estimated easily two hundred men had been killed or incapacitated, and at least a few were in the positions of those who had fired on me with magic. Many more in the army were still readying guns and sending frantic fire my way, and a handful of bullets even glanced off my shield, but there were far too few hitting, and at far too great a range, to even risk breaching it.

I would let this force lick its wounds while I headed off to wreak havoc on another.

The flight was not long, and as before my trick with the coloured aether let me blend in easily with the sky above. I approached like a circling falcon, biding my time until I saw that the moment was right, then striking. I arced down and opened up with a similar trick to my first assault, though this time I smeared the solid block of aether with flammable oil and let the violent force of its breaking ignite the stuff. It was moderately effective, though I decided I would stick with the pure solid next time for expediency.

I was also cautious. It was easy enough to bully the bulk of these armies, and I had carefully confirmed with Blakely that there had been no sign of Aravon Voret among them, but that did not mean I intended to let my guard down. One Highmage of the First Class could throw a wrench into my attacks and render the whole assault on my refinery far easier for my enemies. I doubted they would kill me, but on my own I would not be nearly so difficult to capture.

So I proceeded in bursts. Brief explosions of magical violence, raining down abruptly from the skies to smite at my enemies before disappearing once again. I knew that I would get no more than one chance to lash at each one of them; after they became ready for aerial assaults, I would be met with much more determined resistance for each one.

Really, it amused me that their guards were this low to begin with. They must have heard that I could fly, had they assumed I was unable to multitask as I did so? That I required every scrap of my magical power and focus just to take to the skies?

Evidently, yes because they would not be nearly this unguarded if they had known my true abilities. Perhaps it was just simple arrogance. I have often found that the terribly gifted struggle to comprehend the existence of one whose gifts are greater still.

Whatever the cause, it was very convenient for me right now. I found and hit each of my enemy’s marching forces before my mana reserves began to drop dangerously.

My flight back was enough for the sense of victory to wear off.

Twice during my attacks I had been singed by enemy fire. None of it had been a direct hit, and none had gotten through my shield, but I had felt the strength of their mana and knew that I was dealing with a plurality of Highmages mixed into my enemy’s forces. That, and the larger forces themselves were nothing to scoff at. At least twenty percent magicians by volume—a ludicrously high fraction—and with many of the common soldiers mixed among them being warriors as well.

Several thousand normal men would have been trivial for my defences to stave off, and had they included a normal proportion of magic users and warriors I would have been confident of victory even with Aravon Voret leading them. But they had three times as many magicians as I would have expected, and easily twice as many warriors.

Better to fight twenty, even fifty thousand common men than the military force marching on my refinery now. Suddenly my golems seemed feebler, my cannons less powerful, my magicians less numerous, my own powers…diminished. Suddenly the full extent of the threat I was preparing for came to bear, and my odds became that much slimmer.

I relayed the information to Blakely upon arrival, who, for his part, did not seem even the slightest bit surprised to hear it. Apparently he had a tendency to simply assume the worst in any given situation. Useful for me, if nothing else.

“I’ll keep it to myself,” he grunted, face twitching more than usual. “Don’t want the men to scarper when they find out.”

It was day again by the time I had recovered my strength, and I headed back out into the skies less certainly before. This time my enemies would be prepared for an attack. That did not mean it would be impossible for me to accomplish anything, only that I would have to be far more conservative in my efforts than before. I would not be killing hundreds today as I had yesterday.

The first difference I noted was that each of the forces, though still separate from each other, had all begun marching in more spread-out formations as if the effort were coordinated. It was an attempt to mitigate the damage I might do with another unexpected dive-bomb, and it would certainly prove effective.

But I suspected it was already a trap. By slowing themselves like this, they were suggesting that they had no other way of stopping me from killing their men. That was just too good to be true. I wagered that if I over-committed, they had magicians ready to bring me down and end this whole conflict before it could begin.

My attacks were petty and ineffectual, thrown distantly and high enough that range alone blunted their teeth and saw them killing only a bare few enemies each. Even then I was forced to flee before unleashing too many.

This pattern played out in the rest. I dealt with greater return-fire now and from more positions, and found that my efforts at killing were met with far swifter defences that rendered my bombardments all but worthless. The advantage of flight against being grounded was huge, but I was still only one magician staring down more than a hundred in each force. I think I did relatively well, all things considered.

My greatest contribution by far was in delaying the enemy by those few days more. Every attack I mustered on each force was another pause in their ability to reorganise.

I halted my raids after a near-miss from something eerily similar to Doctor Brown’s magician-killers.

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