The Lich King Reincarnates as a Baby

++The age of reigns of terror was not gone, it had simply lapsed. I was slow in adjusting fully to this fact.++

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

More training followed, a blur of it. I loved every moment of course, finally being put through my paces and allowed to learn with the torturous pressure I would always have preferred. For most of the students at the Winzorth Institute, it seemed to be agony. Outside of classes, people groaned and whined at hours spent in study and bone-deep fatigue. Agrian handled it better than most, his natural enthusiasm for magic taking the edge off any kind of training regime, but even his mood was falling.

I kept my own glee hidden, guessing that it would not be well-received by the rest of the Institute. Months passed.

We acquired more battle-magic tricks; feints and misdirections, as well as gruelling practical exercises in the actual application of all we were learning. I found myself excelling less as the lessons went on, with my own learning curve being long in my past the rest of the students were slowly closing the gap as they went from total amateurs to inexperienced novices. Then again, the gap in raw power between me and the oldest apprentices, the only ones who could even occasionally beat me, was shrinking with time as well. I estimated another year or so before I was the most powerful combatant at Winzorth outside of its Professors. Maybe three to five years until I surpassed all of them as well.

And I was not the only one who was improving, my new pupil, the Grandmaster, was keeping up his necromantic work diligently. He advanced quickly but not exceptionally, or at least not exceptionally compared to most I had taught. This still saw him making good progress, but I could not help but compare it to my own.

It did not compare to my own.

Still, he was enthusiastic if nothing else. The more he learned, the less irritable he became to learn more. We had soon graduated from slightly larger insects to mice, then to larger ones. The day he left a dead dog prancing around his office, I actually feared his celebratory shouts might give us away. Fortunately, the room was heavily soundproofed.

“What next?!” he asked with a grin. “A human, yes?”

I had to enjoy the novelty of seeing him with such an unguarded expression. I knew that it would not last long. It would not, in fact, last even a few seconds more.

“Yes. And I will need you to bring me something, too.”

He froze instantly, and between one breath and the next we were both locked into another aggressive negotiation. This time I enjoyed all the advantages however; I knew what we actually needed, and I was the one supplying the teaching. The Grandmaster had just gotten addicted to furthering his necromantic knowledge, he would do anything to keep from losing that feeling.

“What do you need?” he asked evenly, though I could hear the concern in his voice. He was expecting something huge and impossible, dreading it even. That also worked to my favour; the more outrageous his expectations, the less intimidating he would find what I actually demanded. The more likely I would be to get it.

“I need nothing more than what you need,” I assured him. “With one minor adjustment.”

He did not ask for elaboration, just stared at me and waited. I had to admit, the Grandmaster was a very good starer. I would have to study his technique now that I had a face again.

“I need a live warrior,” I said at last.

“No,” he snapped. “Absolutely fucking not. Are you insane?”

“No.”

“Well I disagree, because you’re asking me for the biggest security risk I…I think I’ve ever seen, have you even considered what you’d do? How this would be hidden? Do you know how loud a warrior can scream if they want to?”

“You have muffling spells on this room, simply cast new ones in a new one. I will also make that room my laboratory, and I can experiment more liberally there than I could here.” The Grandmaster was a risk-taker, but only when it came to his own direct benefit. I was not sure how eager he would be to accept this proposal when I would be the one to grow stronger from it.

“So you want a lab now, too!” he scoffed. “And where will it be, this lab? Somewhere out of the way; a storage closet perhaps? And fuck me if anyone decides to look inside for something?”

“In the Dungeon where our mutual friend is residing,” I suggested. “You have already raised security there, and he will need to continue feeding from mana soon anyway. I can sustain him by giving him the leftovers from my experimentation, and he can guard the dungeon by remaining present to incapacitate or kill anyone who gets past its security.”

The Grandmaster paused.

***

More training passed the time before my laboratory was finally ready, and even then it took a day before I had the free time to head over to it. That latter fact was made easier by the Grandmaster. I had already started to learn enchanting myself, and discovered that it was not that different from the methods I had once used to make protective amulets and rings back during my original reign. Like most modern magic, it was just more refined and more sophisticated, proving that once again a lone genius was no match for millions of idiots subjecting a problem to trial and error.

This item was made by the Grandmaster rather than me, however. Currently my enchantments were simple and fragile things, limited to a tiny fraction of my own full power—a dozen or so vis—and better for showing off than anything. Apparently even this was a rare gift, I had been informed that it would make me a very valuable wife to someone. The thought was as disgusting as ever.

But it was hard to care about that now that I had a real workstation. My new item was a ring, enchanted to conceal my presence. A combination of evocation, simply banishing physical light and sound from around me, with a minor illusion effect that made people less likely to notice me in general. One effect made me hard to see without careful scrutiny, the other made people mentally unable to really scrutinise their surroundings in search of me. A powerful combination.

My body had grown since I last made my way down the steps, and I almost fell as newly lengthened limbs threatened to catch on them as I went. It was not as dark as it had been, magical lights now glowing in several surfaces to illuminate the interior. There was a desk. Several work surfaces, alchemical equipment, flasks and vials, alongside stacked ingredients. Some of these substances were very rare indeed. I saw the bottled blood of a dragon among it all.

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Other parts of the room featured other tools; scalpels and pliers, great cutting things, some resembled torture material more than scientific instruments. I would probably not be using those, torture is an ineffective way of getting information, at least compared to vivisection. My biggest prize by far, however, was the captive. He was bound and shackled in one corner of the room, his body immobilised by thick bands of iron. Gagged, of course, even in spite of the sound-proofing. The Grandmaster was not a man to do anything half-cocked. I wondered where he had procured this specimen.

I saw fear in the captive’s eyes as he caught sight of me looking around. At first he tried to get my attention, probably urging me to go for help. That soon stopped as my experiments began. I wonder sometimes what he thought was going on. Probably that he was being victimized by some spoiled brat, a childish sadist given too much of what she wanted. He could not have known the exact order of being actually holding him.

No, if he had known that, I imagine he would have swallowed his own tongue rather than await what came for him next.

“Have you brought a meal for me, little girl?” Sascithius’ voice was taking on a creeping note, as if he were trying to spook me. Why he bothered I could not even begin to imagine.

“No, this is a subject for my experiments.” The subject in question flinched back, either at my words or the vampire-lich’s presence. Sascithius just chuckled.

***

I would have preferred my existence at the Winzorth Institute to consist solely of lessons, learning and experimentation, but unfortunately the world was, as always, insistent on wasting my valuable time. In the past, I had avoided most of my fellow students by mostly staying in my own room. Now, though, with my newfound need to wander the corridors, I could not help but encounter them even more. My performance in the combat training we were going through had apparently left my popularity to plummet, and I heard a great many whispers aimed my way, of the sort that had not been popular since my early days.

By far the worst offender was Gyrat.

Gyrat was the son of an Earl, and a prodigy of middling talent. Back at his home, somewhere on the fringes of Garamon itself, he was considered a regional genius. This was true enough, but unfortunately for him being the finest magician prodigy in two hundred square miles only made him average compared to the gifts of the Winzorth Institute.

He seemed to dislike this fact. Many of the middling students did, they were the ones who were struck hardest by finding out they were big fish in small ponds. The ones who not only stopped being the very best, but even stopped being special.

What made Gyrat different from most of the other barbarians I called classmates, was that he took his anger out more directly on me.

I ignored it at first, considering it beneath my dignity when he called me a freak, and when he called me a madwoman, and when he called me and my mother whores. In the grand scheme of rhetorical conflict, he did not come equipped with the most impressive arsenal.

But things did not remain verbal forever, and that was when I was forced to take note. Being insulted and called at, I could dismiss, but an assault on me was an insult too far.

His first shove came shortly after another training session, in which I had been put up against two larger boys at once. That was Professor Varylani’s doing. She seemed to take offence to me in particular, and seemed to especially enjoy making my own lessons as hard and painful as they could be. Always watching as I picked myself up, always surprised and disappointed when I did not cry.

Compared to her, Gyrat was a squeaking rodent, but that did not mean I would tolerate him. I skimmed my knee as I hit the stone floor, skin scraped raw by the fall. His laughter stung more than the flash of pain.

“Still just a girl, eh?” he chuckled. I got up as his laughter continued.

“What do you want?” I asked him. Ordinarily I would have simply made him spasm in agony, but unfortunately the Grandmaster had made it clear that I could not do this again. Most magicians were not noble’s children, but they were still prominent. The Winzorth Institute was not attended by children I could get away with tormenting for long.

Gyrat look of utter mental vacancy left me regretting that fact more than ever. He seemed surprised to even have been asked the question, though why that was I could not imagine.

“I…I…Uh…I…” He seemed to have forgotten how to speak.

“Oh dear, are you having some sort of fit?” I asked, dreading the idea. There would be inconvenient questions if he suffered some catastrophic brain hemorrhage during a conflict with me, and people were already calling me the demon-girl on account of that incident with Agrian’s bullies.

Fortunately, the boy did not die. Just snapped back from confusion to some attempt at sneering confidence.

“Worried about me, are you?” he said it with a grotesque expression that I had often seen on people who thought they were being charming. What sort of charms consisted of shoving a person down to initiate conversation, though, was beyond me to answer.

“Worried that you might reproduce and curse the next generation of magicians with that many additional morons,” I informed him. A few hoots erupted around us at that, and I realised a crowd had gathered round, as if they expected us to brawl.

Gyrat looked like he wanted to, though of course did not. There were at least some rules in Garamon that benefitted women, punching us in the face was typically frowned upon, at least without marrying us first.

“Better a moron than a freak!” he shot back.

“Your wit is dazzling,” I sighed. “No, not better a moron than a freak. Being magically ingenious is freakish, being unable to maintain higher brain function when asked a question or regulate your own drool is moronic. See the difference?”

This really was not fair of course, something that had known millennia of adulthood matching wits with a barbaric teenager. I have never been known for my sense of fair play.

Gyrat looked like he was on the brink of convulsions, and more snickering ran out from the group around us. I decided to sweep my gaze to the idiot spectators next.

“All of you leave, now, this is none of your business.” I marched through the group and was satisfied to see them scramble apart before me. As I had hoped, the memory of what I did to Agrian’s bullies was still strong enough to instill a healthy level of fear about me. The Grandmaster had forbidden me from repeating that performance, but he had not let the rest of the Institute know that it was forbidden. The protective threat was still in place.

But that did not mean they stopped looking, or whispering, and I found myself attracting more looks and whispers everywhere I went. In the common room especially, and when I tried to head to my own room I found it blocked off.

I turned in a fury and headed straight for the Grandmaster’s office, but was promptly told by his current assistant—a novice who, like all novices, seemed to hate me in specific for the crime of being a younger apprentice—that he was absent. Whether this was true or not, I could do nothing but wait.

And so I did.

Waited in the common room, without time to read or lurk by myself, and subjected to yet more stares. Gyrat was there and actually leered at me now, though fortunately did not approach. He seemed to have something on his mind. Some of the other students were even more interested—among them I saw Rupert Alghar, Agrian’s former bully. He had a nasty sort of look upon his face that told me he was planning something.

I had, I realised then, made a few enemies already. And with how I had already gone about approaching things, hard power and intimidation, it did not seem that I had any choice but to make even more.

Something lurched down beside me, making me jump. My head twisted around and I saw the surprising figure of Alira Bella Paula planting herself down in the seat beside me. We were hunkered away in the corner of the room, and the corner felt a great deal smaller with her there. Female, like me, but she was still larger than most of the male students. She was in her early twenties after all.

“You look upset,” she noted.

I said nothing. People do not approach you for conversation unless they have a specific one in mind. I was proven right in moments.

“Do you want to head back to my quarters with me?” she asked. “It doesn’t look pleasant, getting all those stares non-stop.”

I weighed the matter, and inevitably decided that one set of eyes was, if nothing else, better than a hundred.

“Yes.”

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