The Lich King Reincarnates as a Baby

++By illegalising necromancy, I see now that the Gods had hoped to prevent any new challengers to their power from emerging in the world. Prevent humans from living long enough to rival them in strength. They had certainly made life harder for me, without my main area of specialty I was significantly less powerful than I could have been. Once I found the chance to practice it safely and effectively, however…well, to say the least, it became clear why they feared necromancers so much.++

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

True to Sascithius’ word, my fellow punished apprentices quickly lost consciousness once they left the dungeon. That had interesting implications about what our actual chances of fleeing on foot were, though as I thought about it I realised that they probably had not been as on-guard as they would have if I were leading them out. Either way, it did not matter now. What was important was whether they retained their memories after waking up.

And I did not intend to leave that to chance.

I made my way through the corridor, surprised only when Agrian hurried up beside me.

“Are you okay?” he asked me.

“I am fine,” I did not look at him as I answered. Somehow the thought of doing so made me…uncomfortable.

“You’re sure?” he placed a hand on my shoulder, but gently this time. “Isabel, I want to know if you aren’t.”

“Why?” I slapped his hand away and glared at him. “I thought I made myself clear enough about your fixation with me already!”

The look on his face made me even angrier.

“Because you’re my sister,” Agrian told me. He was growing angry now, but also had an odd steel showing itself from somewhere behind his eyes. “And whether you care about me or not, I care about you. I’m not going to let you get hurt again.”

The way he said that had all the weight and force of an oath sworn with meaning.

And thinking about it like that gave me a new appreciation for him. Family, in my past experience, had not meant much. Strangers who had alienated me from childhood, and eventually agreed with the rest of my village about luring me out into the woods and killing me once my magical talent became too frightening for them to tolerate any longer. To Agrian however, the Younger if not the Elder, it seemed to be much more.

“Then…I will keep you from needing to,” I told him. “And I will protect you too. I give you…my word.” It was impulsive, and I was not sure at all why I had done it, but now it was done. My word was my bond.

“You just said that like it means a lot,” my brother scowled. “You’re eight, Isabel.”

“I have protected you before!” I snapped.

He smirked at that. “So you’re admitting what happened when we were kidnapped now?”

I started to answer, then found my tongue tying itself in knots and settled for just looking away from my older brother. He really was shockingly frustrating sometimes.

Still, it was good to see he had some wits at least.

The Grandmaster’s office was locked, but I quickly got to fixing that. Working my mana into the mechanism, I let it flow around and naturally around the lock’s internals before solidifying it into proper aether. After that, a single twist was enough to open it and grant me entry. Fortunately, I did not find the old man in a state of undress. I was actually surprised to find him already awake, and apparently he was just surprised to be found.

“You…” he seemed to have something in mind to say, but quickly decided not to say it. I watched as the old magician’s shock melted away. Not gone, I knew that it was still there, but buried beneath the surface. This one had been surprised far too many times over his long career to make it obvious when it happened again.

“We need to talk,” I told him.

“Yeah,” added Agrian. The boy was not actually contributing much, I thought, but I could appreciate that he was making an effort.

“About how you’re skipping out on your detention?” the Grandmaster demanded.

I thought about my retort, and glanced Agrian’s way. Then spoke despite his presence; my brother had more than earned the right to see what was about to happen now.

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“About how you intended to have me trapped by the entity lurking in that dungeon, so that my power could be used to help it regain its former strength,” I shot back.

The Grandmaster could not have been more surprised if I had suddenly walked over and bitten down on one of his hands, but again, as before, he kept it from showing for more than a fraction of a second. Agrian seemed far more shocked than him.

“What? Bastard! I’ll kill you!” My brother took a step forward before I could even think to stop him, then another one with barely more effort as I started to try.

“Wait!” I hissed, but he did not. “Agrian, are you going to make me regret bringing you with me for this?”

That at last had him pausing, and he spent a moment flicking his eyes between myself and the Grandmaster, clearly torn between anger at him and loyalty to me. In the end, the second emotion won out. Barely.

“You shouldn’t make threats that you can’t carry out, boy,” the Grandmaster told him idly.

“Try to kill my sister again and we’ll see how well I can carry it out!” Agrian had courage, if nothing else, but courage without strength was a very quick way to die.

“Can you please give us a moment to speak alone?” I asked my brother.

He looked hurt again in an instant, which was good as it meant he had less focus to spare on being angry.

“You don’t trust me to be here?”

As a matter of fact, I did not. Not after his little display. But just because an answer is the truth, does not mean other people will accept it.

“I do not trust myself to focus while you are…at risk,” I said instead.

I could see that he was far from satisfied with that, but at the very least it got him moving out of the room and past the door. The Grandmaster shut it behind him from the other side of the office by waving a single hand, and I heard the lock turn at that same gesture. Another reminder of the difference between us; what I could do with a few moments of focus and my hand upon the lock, he could do with a single thought and his fingers moving ten paces away.

That, and he could most likely erase whole buildings from existence with the same effort I would need to set a sofa on fire.

“Are you trying to intimidate me?” I asked him openly, not having ever possessed the patience to dance around things like that.

“Why would I bother?” the Grandmaster sighed as he took a seat. “You got out of that dungeon, I doubt you’d be intimidated by little old me after that.”

As a matter of fact, I considered him to be far more of a threat than my former apprentice was—at least in Sascithius’ current condition. That was an interesting thing for the Grandmaster to have said, perhaps he did not know how severely weakened his ally had been by the ravages of time.

“You tried to kill me,” I noted.

“I did.”

“Do not do it again.”

He looked amused at that, turning to stare at me sidelong like he was unsure whether to laugh or scowl.

“I’d expect demands from your brother, he really is a child, but you should know better than to try giving orders to me. I’m a hundred times your current strength.”

“Sascithius and I made a deal, he cannot harm me, and neither can his subordinates. I know that he is too narcissistic to have possibly accepted an equal partnership with you. The only question is, are you willing to defy him right now? I would assume not, you still need him for something.”

The Grandmaster tilted his head.

“You know, if you died, it would be very easy for me to modify a few memories and get away with it.”

“No it would not,” I sighed. “There are too many other masters of magic in this school, do not insult my intelligence. Even if that were not the case, you need me alive to avoid angering your idiot ally.”

I could see him trying and failing to think of another bluff, then the man just sighed.

“Fine, okay, yes, I tried to kill you, but as you said it was part of a deal with another.”

“Did we not have a deal ourselves?” I challenged. He cracked a smile.

“Not by oath.”

I could not help but return his smile at that, it seemed that the age-old tradition of magicians binding themselves by oaths had not entirely died out in this era. That was very satisfying for me, given that I was actually somewhat certain I had first inspired it.

“You are already bound not to act against me by my deal with the idiot, and vice-versa,” I observed. “So instead, you will simply give me private teachings in your office. Let the Institute think I am learning magic from you, and in the meantime you will provide me with any texts or documents you have found in your own unconventional research to gain more knowledge about this world.”

I could see him hesitate at that, instinct apparently warning him against sharing his hidden collection. A common reflex for people in our walk of life. The old habit didn’t outweigh his current situation however, and he nodded after a moment.

“Good. Then I will forget this little fiasco of yours. If it is repeated, however, I will punish it severely.”

“Lichdom,” he said abruptly. “The entity in the dungeon, he promised me the secrets of lichdom. Can you help with that?”

“I can. But not directly. Lichdom has a different process for each person who attempts it, the techniques that worked for me will not work for you. The only way you can attain that state is to master necromancy yourself, and then work out how to create an original ritual that will have the same effect on you.”

He scowled. “That sounds made up.”

“I give you my word that I can teach you to attain lichdom and will work to do so now, this is not a trick.”

It was often inconvenient to be so easily trapped by my oaths, but on the other hand it also made negotiations far easier with people who had heard of my reputation for keeping them. Apparently the Grandmaster had read up about that, among whatever other things were recorded in his illegal sources about me. Perhaps Sascithius had even told him.

“Fine then,” he growled. “So…we’re starting anew?”

“It would seem that we are,” I nodded. He seemed relieved about it, which was satisfying to me. Even in the body of a child, apparently, Lord Dread could still inspire a bit of fear. One day soon, it would be more than a bit.

“One other thing,” I added. “If you betray me ever again, I will kill you, reanimate you as a regenerating undead that can still feel pain and leave you in a vat of molten lead to burn at the exact same rate you heal for the rest of your existence.”

He stared at me with hard eyes, and I could tell he wanted to meet the challenge. But this time he didn’t.

“Fine,” he grunted.

“Excellent, then let us begin.”

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