The Lich King Reincarnates as a Baby

++The problem with breaking new ground, magically speaking, is twofold. First, everything is unknown and unquantified, and so you cannot ask any others for advice. Second, there is a perpetual, greater-than-zero chance you will randomly explode and die.++

- From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, ‘The Great Lich’. 1,891 A.E.

I almost did not get back to the mansion before morning. My enthusiasm was vast, too vast. It ensnared my wits and kept me locked into my work, consuming so much of my expanded intellect that time and space and consequences of my absence melted away. Irrelevant compared to the gripping pull of curiosity and progress.

This was not fully my fault. Who can be blamed for letting themselves be intoxicated by the notion of cosmic power?

But I did eventually notice that things were progressing around me, and I did step back into the leyline chamber and flit my way to the estate just in time to be in bed come dawn.

Half an hour of sleep was not much at all. Fortunately I had gotten used to ignoring the needs of my body in Orapathaqi, and did not especially care if my brain’s development was stunted since it did not affect either my magic or my phylactery-based intellect.

This did not, however, keep me from recoiling and hissing as a servant threw the curtains to my room open.

“Good morning, my lady,” she said chirpily. I groaned and threw a pillow at her head, which she, one of the more experienced servants who had long since grown used to my response in such situations, dodged with only a fractional lean. “It’s time to get up,” she told me.

She was enjoying this, I thought. Taking some depraved, cat-like pleasure from my misery.

“Let me sleep more,” I demanded. If I kept my eyes tightly shut then I would be able to return to sleep all the sooner.

But she did not permit me.

“I’m sorry lady Isabel, but I don’t have a choice. Your father himself ordered me to wake you. He wants to speak with you and lord Qaigor.”

That did stir something in me, a piece of intellect buried deep under the grouchy tiredness.

“What for?” I asked.

“He didn’t tell me, I’m sorry. He did say to give you ten minutes though.” She giggled.

Had my father predicted that I would be slow to rise? That notion offended me, the idea that I was a source of amusement for a damned servant by being read so easily was even worse. I made my way out of bed and dressed hastily, marching from the room without further delay. I was entering my father’s office within five minutes.

He was already seated behind his desk, with Qaigor sitting opposite it. Both turned to me, both looked eager.

“Your brother is ready for additional treatments of…whatever you did the last time,” my father told me. Qaigor nodded so enthusiastically that it would have broken the neck of any normal child, or, indeed, most adults.

“Yes!” he added. “Make me stronger!”

The indignity of being woken up for this felt rather like having a syringe of hydrofluoric acid injected into my eye.

“Fine,” I snapped. “In the future, do not wake me up for such things.”

My father chuckled good-naturedly. “Don’t be a brat, Isabel.” I saw a wary glint in his eye, knew he was unsure about asserting his imaginary authority with Qaigor to witness if I pushed back against it.

But I benefitted from the lie as much as my father did, for now.

“Let us do this somewhere else then,” I sighed. “I suspect Qaigor will want to run around afterwards.”

Qaigor grinned.

We chose the same hall that Agrian and myself had once studied magic under Doctor Brown in. He was still in Lachfel, I remembered then. Now responsible for Victoria’s education as he had once been mine. I felt suddenly compelled to contact him.

Later perhaps, now I had work to do.

“Sit,” I told my brother as he ran around laughing and jumping. He ignored me. “Sit,” I repeated. Qaigor kept giggling.

“I’m going to be stronger than everyone!” he laughed. “Stronger than father!”

“You are not going to be any stronger than you already are if you do not sit,” I snapped. That, finally, made my words sink in and coaxed the boy down to a seated position before me. He was still grinning.

“Stop that,” I told him.

“Stop what?”

“Stop smiling at me.”

“Mother says you should always smile.”

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“You are mocking me, I know it.”

Qaigor grinned wider. “Why are you always in such a bad mood?” he asked me.

“Because I am surrounded by idiots.”

“How do you know?”

“What?”

“How do you know you’re surrounded by idiots,” he asked me.

“Because they say and do things that do not make sense.”

“But what if you’re an idiot, and the reason nobody else makes sense to you is because you’re just too stupid to understand them. How would you know?”

“Be quiet,” I snapped. “I need to focus.”

I did not really, but what I did need was an excuse to silence this irritating demon of a child before I killed him.

Qaigor was fortunately capable of remaining quiet for as long as several seconds at a time. That soon passed, however, and I was left with more giggling and babbling. It came as quite a relief to me when I finally located the knots of mana in him that had formed since my last treatment and begun blocking the flow of magic through his body.

To my surprise, the flow was still largely uninterrupted. Did his body begin to regulate the changes itself once they had been made already? That was highly promising, if it was true then I would be able to maintain a warrior’s peak strength while sitting them down for a session of treatments perhaps once every month or two. It also explained why Qaigor’s strength had still grown so much in my absence.

I got to work quickly in any case, smoothing out the minor imperfections I had revealed and restoring full circulation to the mana cycling through him. Qaigor grew increasingly more energetic as I did so, like he could sense the changes to his body. When I was done he leapt to his feet, leapt right onto them from a seated position, and then leapt again once his heels hit the ground. The second jump took him no less than seven feet vertically.

“This is amazing!” he laughed. As soon as he landed, he was running around the room, practically bouncing off the walls. “I’m going to be the strongest warrior ever!”

I actually could not quite contradict him just yet. Qaigor’s progress was certainly remarkable.

I had expected that though. Magical, and by extension warrior’s, talent ran through my family like…well, presumably like magical talent had run through my old family, unless my existence was even more of a statistical anomaly than I previously believed. That Qaigor would be breaking records with that stacked onto my own personal hand put to strengthening him was not a surprise.

What was surprising was having the ten year-old boy turn to me, run over and wrap my waist in an embrace. What surprised me even more was when he swept me off the floor to lift me high and start swinging me around.

“Thank you!” he giggled. “I love you Isabel!”

“Put me down!” I yelled, feeling my face burn like the blood was being squeezed right out through its pores. It was not, of course, Qaigor was being remarkably gentle, all things considered. The humiliation was simply too much to bear.

He giggled again and plopped me down in front of him, apparently unfazed by his own feat of strength. Qaigor was not large for a ten-year-old and likely weighed half what I did, if even that. I certainly was fazed by it.

“That was…impressive,” I told him, trying, and failing, to regather some semblance of my obliterated dignity.

“I told you,” he declared triumphantly. “I’m the strongest warrior ever!”

He may have been right, though hoisting up a mere double his weight, even at age ten, did not quite prove that. Warriors, like mages, grew exponentially more powerful with time, and if their bodies were smaller and undeveloped then they would be adding another limit onto their physical strength. Qaigor was farther from meeting his potential than a ten-year-old magician would be.

Yes. Maybe he was the strongest warrior. In recorded history, at least. And if one discounted Demigods.

My father chose then to interrupt, knocking first before entering the hall and eying me and Qaigor. He looked uncertain, uncomfortable. Discontent. I suspected he did not like the usage of magic, even if he was willing—even eager, now—to permit it. Acknowledging its benefits on Qaigor’s strength was one thing, but overcoming his ridiculous phobias, apparently, was quite another.

“Are you finished?” he asked. I had half a mind to lie and say we were still continuing, if only to see him off, but just nodded instead. He relaxed visibly. “Good. Good. Qaigor, son, why don’t you go and play somewhere else?”

Qaigor did not need telling twice, flitting right out of the room. His strength had impressed me before. His speed, now, impressed me even more. The boy’s legs were barely half the length of most men’s, yet I saw him sprint away at least as fast as any adult simply with the amount of times each second he could send those limbs darting down beneath him.

It almost felt like I was watching my father move. Perhaps in a few more years, the resemblance would actually be close.

“You want to speak with me in private?” I asked my father. It was not hard to guess, he had never been the most subtle of men. This statement remained true if one expanded the definition of ‘men’ to include those early, bipedal ape creatures modern science claimed we were all descended from.

“Nothing big,” he said hastily. “I’m sure you’re eager to be updated about the financial aspect of what’s going on but I have nothing to say there, it’s going to take as long as I told you it would. This is about Qaigor, or more specifically, about what you’re doing with him. I would like you to keep it a secret.”

“Oh, yes of course,” I nodded. “If it is unknown that I am doing this, then to outside observers our family looks even more talented than we already do, and prospects of marriage become even more appealing to us, yes?”

He relaxed. “Yes, exactly.” My father looked concerned for a moment. “Qaigor is growing so fast that I’m almost worried it’s too fast, that he’s not ready for this sort of power.”

“He does not outstrip the most powerful warriors by that much, if at all,” I pointed out. “If Qaigor ends up being the strongest alive, it will not be by such a huge amount.”

“I know, still…” My father trailed off, his face tightening with worry. I hated that. Hated him. Hated all the petty cattle who considered me a member of their species, and how desperate they were to decide everything was beyond some pre-determined limit other people had decided for them. Their betters.

Fortunately, I was not subjected to it much longer now.

My father seemed to remember who he was talking to, his innocent, drooling little girl who secretly pretended to think about things other than shoes and ponies, and quickly stiffened his upper lip back into its appropriate, glass-like rigidity.

“Well, that was all,” he barked. “Good going Isabel, you’re making the family proud.” He almost managed not to squirm as he said that, then marched out like he was on parade. I felt the sudden, childish urge to hit him with some sort of projectile, but let him go and began practicing my magic instead.

Just another twelve or so hours before sundown, then I could indulge in more experimentation.

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