Book 3, Chapter 73 (Patreon)

There were six people meeting at one of the safehouses I’d put surveillance enchantments in. One of them was Averin, and another was the man who’d introduced himself as Seven. Without the mask on, it was easy to see the familial relation between himself and the former matriarch of House Adylen. There was a story there, but I suspected I’d never know it. It was probably just typical greed and betrayal, anyway.

I didn’t recognize the other four, but I was careful to note their faces just in case that information became useful later. Two were men, one of whom still wore a mask. The other two were women. Everyone looked to be somewhere between the ages of twenty and thirty, but I suspected that was due to liberal use of life extension invocations.

“I don’t see any way we manage to claim House Remin’s seal in the next week,” one of the two women at the meeting said. “The attacks on the other three houses have raised their guard, and we all know Vorik Remin’s reputation as the most powerful battle mage in the world. No amount of stealth is going to get us inside unnoticed, and it would be suicide to attack their home now.”

“I’m afraid I have to agree,” Averin said. “We’ve got three out of the four seals activated and under our control. I think our best bet at this point is to see if we can force the fourth lock on the ward. With three of them undone properly, it might not take so much power to break it the rest of the way.”

“Or it might blow up in our faces,” the unmasked man muttered. “Why are we in such a rush, anyway? Move the hostages out of the tower and nobody will ever find them. And according to the spoiled rich kid here, not even the great Houses know about what’s under the maintenance sublevels. We’ve got time for them to slip up and make a mistake.”

“You’re forgetting our uninvited guest,” Averin told the man. “I still don’t know what his plans are, but I don’t believe for a second he’s going to be content with just looking around. He wants something from the Sanctum, and he’s dangerous enough that I’d hesitate to take him on in a straight fight.”

“So you say,” Seven said. “Is he really so impressive? That team that went into the maintenance tunnels with him didn’t report him doing anything more powerful than a force wall and some divinations.”

“That’s because they were expendable idiots,” the second woman said. She was the older of the two, with auburn hair pulled into a tight tail. “If this Keiran person was using the spell I think he was to kill those mana wraiths, he either has an incredibly large mana core or he’s the most efficient mage I’ve ever heard of. Even if he only killed a quarter of how many those morons reported, it’s still more than anyone here could do.”

Ah, someone had noticed my lossless casting. I’d wondered if that was going to happen or if they’d assume I was very, very good at processing ambient mana into something usable. Not being underestimated now that I had an adult body was a bit of a double-edged sword. I wanted potential enemies to think less of me—all the better to surprise them with—but it was nice not to be constantly doubted and having to prove myself to everyone I met.

Plus it was much less unwieldy holding onto a staff when I was six-foot-tall instead of three-and-a-half. That had been quite the unexpected handicap. It just went to prove that no one could predict every possible consequence of an action.

“He’s pretty easily figured out every puzzle I’ve put before him,” Averin said. “The only one he wasn’t able to solve immediately was the sealed door. In all fairness, we’ve all seen that thing. If he could force that open, the only sane option would be to pledge our loyalty to him and hope he was feeling generous.”

Scoffs came from various people at the table, but their expressions all soured when they realized Averin wasn’t joking. “Have you actually seen him perform any master-level spells?” Seven asked.

“You mean besides the teleportation platforms that are functioning as a network inside the tower? Or the fact that he apparently cut through tens of thousands of mana wraiths by himself? It’s not like we’ve been able to trace his path through those sublevels.”

“But it could all be a trick. He hands the platforms over, but we don’t know he made them. He tells us about a place we couldn’t get access to, but it doesn’t mean he was the one who found it. Maybe this guy is just a mouthpiece for someone else.”

“Who, though?” the unmasked man asked. With a face like his, I’d have probably opted to wear a mask like his companion.

“Patriarch Remin?” Seven suggested.

I was a bit surprised to find that everyone took that idea seriously. After a few moments of silence while they thought it over, Averin eventually shook his head. “The level of manipulation it would take to pull that off is too improbable to credit. No, I think he’s exactly what he appears to be, just with a hidden agenda that doesn’t necessarily line up with ours.”

“Maybe we could make some compromises with him,” the younger woman said. “Just because we don’t have the same goals doesn’t mean we’re at cross purposes. What does he actually want?”

Seven shook his head. “We don’t know. He says he’s just an explorer who’s interested in learning the tower’s history. If that were the case, though, he’d have been content with the pile of history books we gave him. Instead, he went down into the bowels of the city, into places we didn’t even know existed. What if the master control room for the entire tower is behind that sealed door? If we gain access to that, then this shadow war of ours is over. If he gets it… who knows what he’ll do?”

I was mostly just following along at this point to keep an eye on what the Breakers were doing so I could make sure they didn’t interfere with my plans to destroy the tower itself. Other than that one single room in a floor that had no mana, I’d effectively mapped out most of the tower. Though, now that I thought about it, there were some floors above floor one-fifty that mirrored the lower rune-hallway levels, only with a focus on channeling and aiming a mana beam.

I hadn’t felt the need to visit them personally once I’d discovered the master control room, if only because they were largely irrelevant to my own plans. The only interesting thing at the top of the tower was the skeleton of the massive dragon that had almost certainly starved to death up there. I had little doubt its fate had been echoed across the world by every other dragon as well.

“Getting back on track,” Averin said. “It’s unlikely we’ll have an opportunity to even attempt to kill Vorik Remin, let alone kidnap one of his descendants and bind his seal to them. It’s entirely possible we’ll fail to break through the ward on the master control room with only three of the four seals, but it’s worth taking an hour to try it. Even if it fails, we won’t be out anything.”

There was some resistance to the idea, but in the end, Averin got his way. The group quickly made plans to fetch the two hostages from the other houses—it turned out Seven was a part of House Adylen after all, and had already bound himself to his grandmother’s seal—and report to the warded doorway. They weren’t wasting any time about it, either. Orders were given and people were mobilized. Teleportation platforms activated on various floors as everything got organized while I sat and watched.

 Did I want to interfere with this plan? If so, when exactly would be the best moment to jump in? Short of spending a few years building ward-breaking equipment to aid me in getting through the door, I had no way in on my own. The Breakers’ plan had a better chance of succeeding than anything I could do in the short term, though I suspected they were still underestimating the power in that ward. Even if three out of four seals were used, that did not guarantee the ward would weaken. It might do nothing at all without all four.

Of course, their theory could be correct. It might be set up to work that way, though if it did, it would merely confirm what I already knew: whoever had built that chamber had done it as an afterthought to the tower. No other ward, all of which had a familiar style, would function the way the Breakers were hoping this one did.

Even if they were right, and the ward sealing the room was substantially weakened, they still might not be good enough to get through. That would be the best time to intercede. I could break through where they failed, possibly eliminating some of them if necessary. Depending on what was in the room, it might prove pointless to fight over it. I hardly needed another cache of weapons, for example. I merely wanted the variable eliminated from my own future plans.

While the Breakers got ready to descend to the depths of the tower to make their attempt, I made my own preparations. A bracelet seemingly made of glass went on my wrist, something I’d prepared specifically for this potential fight when I’d last visited home and had access to my crucible. On my other arm, a copper armlet glittered around my bicep. My belt buckle was carved from one end to the other with runic script, and I’d made the painstaking effort to thread small, flexible strips of rune-engraved gold into the inner lining of my cloak.

None of it should prove necessary, but I was hesitant to face an unknown number of what probably constituted the most powerful mages on the planet without some options. Everything was full of mana, including my own body. Once more, I settled down to watch and wait.

An hour later, the Breakers used my teleportation platform to reach the door. None of them betrayed even the slightest hint that they might have realized I was aware of that, which I’d expected. Their lack of knowledge on how a teleportation platform even functioned made it a good bet that they wouldn’t realize I’d modified mine. Still, I would have thought they’d be more suspicious, since I’d just listened to them talk about how little they trusted me.

Then again, they’d brought no less than thirty mages with them. Huddled in the middle of that group were two children, neither older than ten. I felt my lips compress into an angry grimace when I saw that. For some reason, I’d assumed their hostages would be adult members of the great Houses, but they’d somehow gotten the bright idea to abduct kids instead.

I was not a man with an overabundance of scruples, but that right there made me glad I’d learned the faces of every single person at that council meeting – well, except for the one wearing a mask, but I had eyes on him even now. When things inevitably went sideways, they’d be at the top of my list of people to punish.

The kids were marched to the door, the seals shoved into their hands, and instructions whispered into their ears. Hesitantly, fearfully, they pressed the seals to the spots they’d been told to. Standing behind them, Seven reached over their heads to do the same. Through my scrying spells, I could see the magic start to unravel, exactly like how the Breakers had hoped it would.

That left only a quarter of the ward structure to defend the room from being forced, and while I still wasn’t confident Averin could do it, I knew I could. One way or another, I was getting into that room today.