The Lich King Reincarnates as a Baby

++The abstract nature of currency in a modern-day economy never ceases to amuse me.++

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

My destination was not going to be randomly assigned. If the six-month waiting period had done anything, it was give me the chance to more thoroughly research the modern world and decide precisely where I would be founding this new business of mine.

In practice, oil convenience was only part of this equation. What I wanted above all else was a lack of proximity to the Gods. I had been able to call on my full power in Irucci with relatively little risk, because simple distance meant that they did not sense even my majestic strength. That was a good feeling. It was freeing, and it meant I did not likewise need to rely on the presence of a leyline.

Of course, being near a leyline would be necessary if I was to avoid reports of local people randomly feeling spikes of ominous magical power akin to an especially strong and enraged Demigod.

Irritating. Everything I did was, still, constrained by others. It did not matter how trivial and petty they were, they were numerous and that made them my problem.

In the end I had been forced to compromise. Rather than finding the best oil fields I could without remaining too near to the Gods, I simply settled for the largest ones that were within my purchasing range and near in proximity to a leyline. This leyline would serve a dual purpose, anyway, in the future, one that would prove especially useful during the early start of my business.

But that was me getting ahead of myself again. It was a hard habit to break, perhaps a consequence of the ‘lich’s mindset’ I had observed in so many of my kind.

When your mind is able to process variables with both speed and quantity that is simply impossible for an ordinary human, you tend to find yourself thinking far ahead almost on reflex. This was not always a bad thing, extremely long-term planning was a good habit to get into.

But the future was changeable, no matter how much you tried to account for. Compared to all the infinite complexities and complications life could produce in even a single year, the average mortal intellect could consider only a tiny drop in the ocean.

A lich could consider ten, maybe twenty. I prided myself on managing as many as a hundred. But that was still a matter of countable drops in an uncountable ocean.

Better to focus on the present.

My destination was almost decided for me, by circumstance. A country called Gulnira, located in the northern part of the continent of Poloira. It was actually a former colony of Garamon. Former, because a hundred or so years prior it had staged a successful revolution and thrown off the imperial yoke.

Such was the common saying. In reality, its pale-skinned colonial leadership had just stopped paying taxes to other pale-skinned people in a different continent. If you happened to be one of the native populations of Poloira, things had become, if anything, even more brutal since then.

Such was life.

The existence of an embittered native population who might be so inclined as to kill Garamon soldiers when equipped with guns and trained in magic was just another reason to select this area as my starting ground.

I set off with, at my father’s insistence, Blakely, the twitchy, half-mad bodyguard he had hired after my and Agrian’s first near-kidnapping. The Cadnichan seemed to have gotten even less stable with time. Where once he had been young and energetic, his nervous spasms seemed to have taken on a more measured, patient tone now. I got the distinct impression, watching him, of a spring being coiled.

That was fine by me, provided it came uncoiled at an opportune time.

Travel would be less convenient than I might have hoped, however. My family did not possess a cloudscraper of their own, and as I was travelling on behalf of neither Garamon’s army nor its foremost magician’s institute, I could not hope to be loaned one for free. Winzorth had reached out requesting that I continue my studies with them, for that matter. I had not declined yet, simply said that I would be taking a year off at least. They had accepted it and reserved my place. Such was the treatment due to Garamon’s most talented magician.

Unfortunately, the ocean did not care about my talent anymore than anyone else’s.

My saving grace was that I needed to travel only with myself and Blakely, which meant, unlike the cumbersome military deployments that sluggishly rolled their way along the oceans, I was free to select a faster vessel.

Modern steam power was making boats quicker by the year. The fastest I could find on short notice promised an average speed of eighteen miles per hour while at sea, which would cut my three-thousand-mile journey down quite nicely.

Granted, I would still be spending almost a week held hostage by my vehicle, but it was certainly better than a month.

“I hate the sea,” Blakely growled as we stepped onto the vessel’s deck and felt it breeze out onto the waves beneath us.

I ignored him.

“It’s too big,” he muttered. “Too dark. Never know what’s hiding beneath the waves.” He glared at the water, like he was silently challenging it. Urging it to try and prove him right with an attack.

It did not, of course. It was water. Its opinion of his delusional paranoia was likely similar to its opinion on my magical talent.

Blakely continued his one-sided glaring match for a few moments more before turning to me.

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“I need to keep you from dying,” he told me.

“Yes,” I replied. “I am aware.”

His face convulsed in a twisted rictus. It looked like the sort of expression corpses would make, if they could still move their facial muscles.

“No, you don’t understand,” he added. “If you die on my watch, it means a warrior of the Third Order is going to track me down and rip my legs off. I’m not going to let that happen. So from hereon out, I clear everything you want to do, everywhere you want to go and everyone you want to see.”

I obviously did not like that idea.

“You want to restrict my movement, actions and social interactions,” I echoed. Recently, when I did that—repeated what someone said in a blank tone, while staring at them very angrily—they tended to quite suddenly alter their behaviour. It was one of the many perks I had discovered from being among the most powerful magicians alive.

But Blakely did not seem to care about that, he just met my eyes, face twitching like always.

“I’m not going to shut down most of what you want to do, unless it’s pointlessly dangerous, but I need to know ahead of time so I can safeguard against it.”

“Safeguard how?” I asked him.

He paused. “Mostly just get ready to plug someone in case they try to do you.”

His dialect was different from most of the other Garamon speech patterns I was used to, and it took me some time to adjust. A consequence of Cadnich’s port role in the Empire. Blakely’s form of common Garamon speech was actually a chimeric construct formed from half the ports in the Empire.

In many ways, that only made it more useful for me to build a general vocabulary as I spoke with him. It did not make the journey any easier, however.

I was able to continue practicing as I sailed across the ocean, adding to the long months I had already spent empowering myself at the Vornholt Estate. Little trickles of magical power for my new Vessel, adding up over time. By the time the shores of Poroia were within sight, I could muster a maximum output of twenty two thousand, eight hundred vis.

Closing in, rapidly, on the raw strength of a first-class Highmage. It felt simultaneously good to be approaching yet another milestone, and utterly humiliating to be so pleased with nearing a lowly height like that.

Blakely apparently found this more significant than I did. He did not say anything, but I caught him eyeing me wearily more than once as he watched me train. I could practically taste the fear on him.

Warriors were, in the most technical sense, magicians. Just magicians whose bodies used mana more directly and permanently. As such they could still sense mana. Most never learned the technical mastery needed to do so with any detail, but Blakely seemed to have a near-instinctual grasp of it.

Perhaps that heightened sensory prowess came from his rather unique personality.

Whatever the cause, the result was the same. I soon scared him.

No matter. I often scared people, less now than I had in my old life. People do not fear women as much as they do men, even women with power. Especially women and men with power.

Which was just another one of Garamon’s mistakes that would make my rise so much easier.

The ship was docked quickly, and I paid for it with one of several letters of credit I carried on my person, which collectively represented a significant fraction of the Vornholt family’s funds. I could have lined my clothing with bricks of solid gold and scarcely carried a greater fortune.

This did not bother me as much, because I was permanently protected by my shield charm in such a way as to ensure safety from any objects moving between five and several thousand metres per second. I had not tested it against things faster than that, and had keyed it not to trigger against things slower to ensure it was not prematurely triggered every time I jogged. Manually keeping it inactive when I sprinted was annoying enough.

It bothered Blakely though, and I was watched like a hawk right along the landscape as we took a carriage from the docks and headed deeper into the new continent.

The oil fields I was interested in purchasing were quite far from the docks. Even taking the fastest carriage I could, it took us a day and a half to reach them. That was just fine by me. The farther they were from shore, the more added inconvenience to any of Garamon’s minions sent to spectate them. Blakely and I got out and I headed to the lands, soaking in the sights and scrutinising them all. He stood by and watched, feigning boredom but in reality drawn back like a crossbow with the anticipation of sudden violence.

“Not that big, is it?” he asked me. “Look at it.” He swept a hand out.

I had to admit, he was not wrong. I knew for a fact I could have purchased a field twice as big for the sum I was putting forth here. But this was not just about the oil.

“There is also that leyline,” I noted, indicating the distant site with a nod.

“Isn’t it tapped out?” he asked.

I smiled. “This will do,” I said, more to myself than anything. “The nearest city and owner are how far?”

“You don’t know?” he frowned. “About ten miles that way.”

I did know, but there was always a good reason to ensure you knew how much your subordinates paid attention to.

We cleared the ten-mile journey fast enough, travelling by my sled now that we were far from civilization. Blakely was utterly terrified by the speeds involved. This was amusing to me for two reasons; the first a simple irony, knowing that he was not actually much slower than this when running flat-out himself, and the second a more general enjoyment for human fear.

The land was currently owned by some dribbling simpleton of such insignificance that even my superhuman memory did not have the chance to fully commit it before I had banished the information. What mattered was solely how much money he intended to charge for the land.

More than I would have hoped, indeed quite a lot more than it was generally considered to be worth. I paid the fee regardless, because I knew things the general market did not.

“Can you afford that?” Blakely asked me, once we’d headed back to my new land with the deed properly verified and possessed.

“Yes,” I told him. His scepticism was palpable.

“I saw the bills you were carrying around,” he continued. “I don’t think you can.”

“You saw more than you should have then,” I told him openly. “But still not everything you might have.”

“Is there some rule that you need to start talking in riddles once you become a magician?” he snapped.

I narrowed my eyes.

“You will talk to me with more respect,” I warned him.

“No I won’t, I watch over you when you’re asleep and if I stop answering your dad’s letters then your funding stops.”

I had gotten too used to having my way lately, this unexpected defiance actually unbalanced me.

For a moment.

“You cannot be trusted with this information,” I replied at last.

Blakely shrugged, suddenly calming down. “Fair enough.”

I decided that I would likely never work out how his mind worked. In the meantime, though, I still did not need to worry about over-spending on the land, because I had a source of income the wider society of Garamon did not know about.

Lord Dread’s enchanting.

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