“Introductions, first,” I said. “I’ll assume you already know that my name is Keiran, and that you’ve been told a great deal about me by Ammun.”
Both diviners gave nods, and the old man spoke. “Nakra Adylen,” he said. “Senior diviner for Great House Adylen.”
“Oslea,” the woman said simply as she sneered at her fellow diviner.
“Does Great House Adylen even still exist?” I asked.
The woman snickered.
“We certainly do!” Nakra said stiffly.
“The ones willing to stick their tongues up Ammun’s bony ass do, at least,” Oslea added.
“Silence!” Nakra snapped. “Lesser mages should know their places.”
“I agree,” I said. “And since you’re lesser than me, maybe you should limit yourself to answering my questions, Nakra.”
I could practically hear the old man’s teeth grinding against each other, but he kept his mouth shut and gave me a tight nod.
“And as for you,” I told Oslea, “I’m not interested in whatever this feud you have going on is about. If you can’t stop picking at this guy for ten minutes, I’ll toss you into the side of a mountain and find someone else to speak for your group.”
It wasn’t an idle threat. My tolerance for people was at an all-time low, and it had never been very high to begin with. Ammun’s death weapon loomed overhead, literally, and I needed to know more if I was going to stop it.
“Let’s start with this secret project of Ammun’s,” I said. “I’m assuming he’s close to finishing it, considering the effort he’s put into keeping me busy. How much longer until it’s operational?”
“We don’t know. That wasn’t really what he had us doing,” Nakra said.
“You set him back quite a bit when you destroyed the collar,” Oslea added.
I shook my head. “No, he’s close to finishing something. Otherwise, he’d just be wasting resources trying to distract me now.”
“The summit project?” Oslea asked, looking at Nakra.
“I can’t imagine that will be done soon,” the older diviner said. “We’re still eight hours away from just establishing the relay link.”
“What does that do?” I asked.
“Does what it sounds like,” Oslea said, rolling her eyes. “Relays information from the summit up to the moon.”
“Which moon?”
“Yulitar.”
There was some irony there. Yulitar was also known as the corpse moon, an appropriate place for a lich archmage to tie himself to. I doubted that was why Ammun had chosen it, however. Yulitar was also the largest moon, which theoretically meant it had the largest core. It had one of the slower orbits around Manoch, but I was sure Ammun had done the math and determined that the amount of mana he could harvest while it was in the correct part of the sky was greater than a different moon that appeared more frequently but produced less mana.
“The divination corps have been working in two shifts for over a month to complete the rituals,” Oslea said.
“But that just establishes the link,” Nakra said. “At best, it lets Ammun put a beacon on the moon to scry through. Maybe he cobbles together a mana drain, but so what? It’s not like he can weaponize Yulitar overnight.”
That was a good point, but it just told me that Nakra didn’t understand Ammun’s objective. Whatever he was trying to do, he was wrapping it up now. I could safely assume I had half a day at most before he was done unless I interfered, which would involve challenging Ammun directly at the summit. At least he wouldn’t be inside his own demesne there.
That… did actually give me enough time to utilize my resonance point to reach stage seven, as long as there was nothing else the old lich could throw at me between now and him finishing up. Things had been quiet at New Alkerist for a while now, but other towns were still being attacked by undead controlled by necromancers.
I spent twenty minutes questioning the two diviners about the summit, Ammun’s plans, and anything and everything they thought was relevant. That got me confirmation of the summit’s location and a near certainty that Ammun was camped out there to ensure I didn’t destroy everything he’d been building like I’d done with the ring of facilities they called the collar. From the name alone, I had a suspicion that its primary purpose was to lock a moon in place so that it would orbit in time with Manoch’s rotation, granting a never-ending source of mana, but they couldn’t confirm that.
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That was more of a long-term problem, however. If Ammun did have a way to unleash mana blasts from Yulitar, he’d only need to fire it once to get rid of me. Rebuilding the collar and keeping the moon leashed in position relative to his tower could be accomplished after I was gone. Apparently, I hadn’t really delayed anything by destroying those machines, at least not anything that would have bought me more time.
What a fool I’d been to assume I’d slowed him down.
Once I learned everything I wanted to know, the conversation switched topics. “Your diviners are split into two groups,” I said. I gestured toward Nakra and said, “You represent the ones who want to go somewhere far, far away from Ammun and me, where we won’t bother you and you can live your lives.”
“And the rest of us aren’t a bunch of cowards. We want our old lives back,” Oslea said.
“Idiots,” Nakra muttered. “No matter what happens or who wins, nothing will be like it was. Don’t you think I’d be fighting for the same thing if there was the slightest chance?”
“I’m going to have to agree with Nakra,” I said. “Regardless of who wins this conflict, you’re never going back to how things were before Ammun woke up.”
“Is it true, then? You really do want to tear the tower down? I always thought that was a lie Ammun’s followers told to get people to side with him.”
“No, that’s true. The tower is wedged into the shell around the world core and needs to be removed in order to heal the planet. I’ll have to destroy it to restore the balance of mana. You all are free to build a new tower somewhere else if you really want to, but Ammun’s demesne has to go.”
I didn’t know why anybody would want to build a giant tower like that, especially if it wasn’t going to be tapping directly into the world core to monopolize every scrap of mana produced. It had its uses, to be sure, but to this day, I still didn’t understand what had possessed Ammun to start that project. Maybe he’d just done it to prove he could. Maybe he’d been bored. I’d certainly spent years on nonsensical projects just to see if I could pull them off.
For mortal mages with finite life spans measured in decades or perhaps a pair of centuries at most, building something like that tower was pointless. They could build an entire city from the ground up in a fraction of the time, one that would be more than sufficient to meet their every need. As much empty space as there was in the world these days, it wouldn’t even be hard to find enough room. Almost the entirety of what Ammun had claimed as the Ralvost Empire had been uninhabited by anything but monsters and animals, and that would all be up for grabs soon enough.
“You’re going to tear down what’s been our whole world for countless generations,” Oslea said, slumping back into the chair. “But you’re also going to destroy Ammun?”
“I am,” I said.
“Then I’m with you,” she declared, as if that settled things.
“What makes you think I want you with me?” I asked.
Her jaw fell open, and she cast a bewildered look between Nakra and me. “But… I thought… If you don’t want… Then… But you saved us? You don’t want our help?”
“With fighting Ammun? No, not even a little bit. I don’t have time to individually interview all of you, and I can’t trust that there aren’t loyalists to his cause in your ranks. This meeting is to determine where I’m going to put you all for the foreseeable future to keep you safely out of trouble.”
“Do we get a say in this?” Nakra asked.
“Sure. There wouldn’t be much point in a meeting otherwise. I’d have just announced my decision and sent you on your way if that’s what I wanted to do. I do have some stipulations, however. You won’t be placed anywhere in or near Ralvost, nor will you be allowed into my territory.”
It was weird to think of the island as my territory, but in a way, it kind of was. If that was the case, though, I was a terrible territory lord. I’d mostly just ignored everyone other than to spread some basic knowledge of magic. For all the work I’d done that actually benefited anyone besides me, any enchanter could have done the same. If Tetrin had been willing to teach other people and had the access to the amount of mana I did, he could have done all of this.
I didn’t feel particularly guilty about that. I had more important things to worry about, and besides, no one was entitled to my time and energy, not even my own family. I’d fix what I wanted, when I wanted, and if people weren’t happy with that, then they could just go on being unhappy.
“An island would be good,” Nakra said. “Something big enough to support life, but uninhabited. We could rebuild there, far away from all of the fighting. If we could retrieve our families…”
“Not a bad idea. Getting anyone else from the tower will have to wait, though. I’ve scried out a few islands, but I can’t promise any of them have long-term viability. You’ll have your work cut out for you, especially getting access to enough food to keep you from starving. Do any of you actually know anything about farming?”
The two diviners exchanged uneasy glances. “We… weren’t really farmers…” Oslea admitted.
Of course they weren’t. Their whole lives were spent in the tower, except for those unlucky enough to be sent to oversee yearly pilgrimages through the surrounding villages to collect food while tricking all the natives into believing they were angelic messengers.
“Maybe that is a bad idea, then,” I said. “If I drop you off on an island, you’re going to need to be able to forage and hunt enough food to keep everyone from starving, and you’re going to have to figure out some basic farming at the same time.”
“Foraging shouldn’t be too unreasonable. We are diviners, after all,” Nakra said.
“How many of you can fight?” I asked, remembering the pitiful attempts at defending themselves most of the diviners I’d just killed had put up. Other than that pair of mages with the construct summons, I doubted a single one of them could have defeated Senica in combat.
“Five or six?” Oslea asked as much as stated. She looked over to Nakra, who shrugged and nodded.
“Something like that,” he agreed.
“Alright, if that’s what you want. Give me ten minutes to get the portal ready and I’ll send you all through with some supplies to last a week or two.”
I’d found dozens of islands off the coast, most of them no more than a few hundred feet wide, but a few that had miles of land on them. What I hadn’t done was vetted them for monsters, so I hoped Oslea hadn’t been exaggerating about having a few diviners who knew how to fight in their ranks. I chose one that was about five miles long and a half-mile wide, its interior filled with trees.
The portal took shape after a few minutes and I held it in place manually while dumping food out of my phantom space. Thanks to its ability to temporally preserve its contents, I had a considerable supply that I was willing to donate.
“Pick something up and march through,” I yelled.