Chapter 34 — A Master at Work

The Archmage of the Tower sat in the inscribed circle that would produce his shadow avatar and project it into the meeting room. As the divination tool on the wall indicated the meeting time, he invoked the spell, and his awareness shifted.

Seated at the meeting table were an unfortunate number of new faces compared to the last meeting. The still unresolved infiltration and assault on their project had cost a significant number of promising mages. Losing the acting task leader had been a blow in particular. She was quite talented at organization and reliably produced results.

This time, justicars were stationed at the teleport rooms to guard against any further attacks and maybe catch the infiltrators in the act.

Beside him his fellow elders had also arrived. Elder Valeris seemed agitated, but that was to be expected with a murderer targeting his faction’s members. That Elder Mellerith to his other side appeared calm and relaxed was comforting—with Mellerith’s connection to the Church of Malor, if they were at personal risk, the mysterious master mage would likely be aware of it.

The Archmage folded his hands on the table and leaned forward. “Let us get started. Setting aside the Tower infiltrator and the recent murders, how is the security situation for our current operations?”

The new acting task leader cleared his throat and spoke, “An as yet unidentified actor with access to young bloodline warriors and powerful mages continues to strike at the taskforce’s operations. This time, our research mission in Haverin City was the target. Fortunately, the priest of Malor assigned to that mission sensed the tightening Web of Fate and managed to escape with the mission leader, the preliminary research results, and a few promising research subjects before we lost contact with the rest of the mission team set up in the city sewers and have relocated to the hidden research facility near the farm. Notably, they were able to complete the recruitment of Sarlen Haverin before relocating.”

There was a moment of silence at the scale of the loss. Only two survivors. Elder Valeris seemed particularly upset by the news, obviously clenching his fist in clear view of the table.

Beyond the losses themselves, dealing with the relatives of the noble scions discovered to be involved would be a significant headache.

“Were any other recruitments successful?”

“Yes. All four have been recruited and should arrive at the farm soon.”

The Archmage breathed a sigh of relief. That was one worry that he could set aside at least. “What are the updates on acquiring or duplicating Fenton Ravenhill’s research?”

“That he hid important information from us has become clear. We have had some partial successes, but there seems to be a key ingredient missing necessary for stabilizing the changes and decreasing the incidents of undesirable mutations. We’ve identified some promising candidate ingredients to resolve the problem and, with the help of newly recruited alchemist Grensel, are making steady progress toward a working elixir with an acceptable success rate.”

“And the spatial key to the Royal Strategic Weapons Vault?”

“We have acquired the key and are devising a plan to retrieve the Orb of Endless Ice.”

More good news. Overall, even with the setbacks and heavy price paid, the timetable for completing their assigned mission was still intact.

Before he could commend the new task leader for his excellent work under pressure, Elder Valeris grabbed his chest in pain and let out a tortured scream. The shadow shrouded face then pitched forward strangely as the Shadow Avatar dispersed.

A surreal moment of stunned silence passed before the Archmage was on his feet. “Send Justicar Orth’s team to Elder Valeris’ chambers immediately! Engage the tower’s spatial lock and perimeter defenses! No one in or out! Everyone, evacuate the meeting chamber but stay in pairs!”

The room exploded into motion as the gathered mages rushed for the teleport circles.

All except for himself… and Elder Mellerith, who was oddly calm. If he could have seen through the shadow veil hiding the elder mage’s face, the Archmage would have sworn his fellow elder was smirking.

“You can rest at ease, Archmage,” Elder Mellerith spoke. “You and I are not at risk.”

The Archmage blinked and cold fear ran through him. “You knew. Did you arrange for this?”

The hooded figure leaned back in his chair with nonchalance. “Arrange it? No. Choose not to stop it? Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because his personal ambition was becoming a risk to the project. And the Church of Malor has a particular interest in seeing this project succeed.”

Something troubling was certainly going on with Elder Valeris’ faction. They had been poaching members from other factions at an increasing rate of late. Now the reclusive mage’s faction was specifically being targeted and the man was refusing to turn over the bodies of his murdered faction members to the justicars even when it was a matter of Tower safety, saying it was a matter of pride and that his faction would uncover the culprit themselves…

“The idea of a family of vampires gaining resistance to sunlight was of interest to Malor, but Valeris was making too many of the taskforce members into vampires and thralls, planning to subvert the mission, the Tower, and eventually the kingdom. So, as Malor willed, I allowed our overly ambitious fellow to face the karma due to him because of his actions rather than disrupt the Web of Fate.”

Vampires? In the Tower?

Was that how Elder Valeris could so blithely commit to providing a captured vampire to sacrifice for their research? Was he really just punishing or making an example of one of his own?

“You didn’t know, huh?” Elder Mellerith chuckled. “Well, Malor is not opposed to your goal of extending your lifespan either. Though from what I gather, he finds it lacking in originality.”

For a god to be taking such a direct interest in their affairs had been terrifying from the start, but why was Elder Mellerith telling him all of this now? Worry turned to dread, and not wanting to risk leaving his body defenseless any longer, the Archmage dispersed his Shadow Avatar and returned to his body.

After hearing about the situation with the recently-turned vampires captured in Haverin City, Kaylie felt moving her timetable forward was necessary. Fortunately, the tower leaders’ rooms had windows for allowing messenger birds access, or the task would have required more time or a direct assault on the chambers. Something fraught with unknown and unknowable risks.

And more fortunately, the Vampire Lord masquerading as a Tower elder had needed to project his Shadow Avatar into the meeting room while she was hidden inside his quarters, observing for information and an opportunity to kill him.

And even more fortunate than that, Kaylie had been able to put his thralled attendant to sleep while his master was oblivious to the world, search the Vampire Lord’s desk for relevant information, and kill the evil bastard, all before the meeting ended.

Unfortunately, killing an elder during a meeting wasn’t something that would go unnoticed or unresponded to even if he was secretly a Vampire Lord. Kaylie made for the window and leapt outside, wrapping herself in an invisibility illusion as she ran down the outer wall. She made it about a third of the way toward the ground before birds made of every known element started forming and flying at her.

Petal-stepping, dodging, and responding with air element attacks of her own, she defended against the onslaught of explosive, freezing, poisoning, bludgeoning, enervating, and other magics. That the primary location for the kingdom’s mage academy, mage governing body, and mage housing would have divinations against invisibility wasn’t unexpected, but that still left her best route of escape to be as she was already doing. Taking to the air would just make her an easier target. This way, at least the attacks were limited in direction and strength to avoid damaging the tower itself.

Kaylie had hoped to accomplish more while infiltrating the Tower, but a discovery from the documents on the Vampire Lord’s desk proved that cutting her investigation short had been the right decision: the cultists still had a Remnant at their secret research location. And so, it would fall to the humans to finish cleaning up their own mess now—as it rightly should. Still, she had set in motion a backup plan to push events in that direction. As she told Arienos, she had been doing more than just killing vampires, after all.

Explosions roared out as the magic attacking Kaylie slammed around her when she reached the ground, landing in one of the training fields inside the Tower complex of buildings. Knights with glowing eyes and glowing clubs and shields appeared in front of her as she exited from the cloud of steam and dust to make for the wall separating the Tower’s buildings from the wealthy streets of Ester’s capital city.

Kaylie aimed a quick series of disabling strikes at the two knights only to have all of them dodged, some just barely, and counters were unerringly accurate—as if they could completely predict her movements even when she was using an invisibility illusion. Her aura was able to repel the strikes that landed, but it was an uncomfortably close matter.

Dealing with enemies with predictive abilities was a pain, but there were two surefire ways to overcome them.

First was to overwhelm them with speed and to make use of undodgeable area attacks. Switching to attacks with the intent to kill, Kaylie fully released her aura, and winds thick with the heady scent of exotic flowers and swirling with the deceptively sharp beauty of colorful petals filled the training fields, disorienting their perception, muddling their minds, and cutting at their bodies. Her aura domain had the additional benefit of further pushing back the effective area of the tower defensive spells, detonating or wearing them away long before they could come close.

And the second way to deal with such enemies was to restrict their movements. Whether that was through subtle buffeting of winds, dazzling of the eyes, cutting at sensitive areas that would cause instinctive reactions, or working the threads of karma to make Fate itself weigh against them, Kaylie made use of all her tools, not willing to risk being stopped here with so much at stake.

The mens' eyes widened in fear as they were suddenly barely dodging for their lives while still accumulating wounds, an expression Kaylie had seen often from the men who underestimated her. That fear added to their hesitation, and experience had long taught her to take advantage of it.

Two powerful weaves shot out to wrap around the knights' minds, enhancing that fear and trapping them in their delusions.

Even if they eventually resisted her attack, that moment was all she needed to arrive at the outer barrier blocking her egress. Slipping through barriers was a technique she had long-mastered, and another weave wrapped her, convincing the wards that she was nothing more than air as she drifted past and Petal-stepped into the city.

Brendon nervously knocked on the High Council member’s door. He hoped that the foreign illusion master’s plan would work. Otherwise, his future and likely his life were surely forfeit.

“Come.”

Taking a deep breath to gather his courage and still his shaking hands, Brendon turned the old-fashioned latch and entered the master mage’s chambers.

Master Uresin hardly taught classes these days and was considered mostly retired, but he was still well respected, and his faction had a reputation for neutrality and a focus on nurturing future academics.

The bespectacled and long-bearded master glanced over from the array of floating papers and animated writing implements and raised an eyebrow. “Hmm, are you sure you have the right room?”

“Yes, Master Uresin,” Brendon quickly replied with as much conviction as he could muster. “I was told to deliver a letter.”

After receiving the letter, the master mage’s eyebrow remained raised. “This letter is magically sealed.”

Brendon nodded. “She said you’d know the glyph needed to open it.”

A response that caused his unraised eyebrow to join the raised one. “…I see.”

After the third try the letter glowed and unfolded. A glance at the contents was all it took for the aged master to wave away his work and move to settle himself in a well-worn chair, his face ashen. As the notes arranged themselves neatly on his desk, the quills and pens floated over toward the mage together with several sheets of freshly fetched paper. “We’ll have to convene the Council. Wait here, boy, I’ll prepare the notices.”