“Querit,” I said, “Did we have visitors while I was away?”

I stood in the middle of the valley on my teleportation platform and frowned as I felt out the foreign node of mana embedded in my wards. My assistant was in the lab, peering over my shoulder through the scrying mirror I’d pulled out of my phantom space.

“None that the wards detected,” he said. “I suppose I could have missed somebody coming in who was already keyed in. But I’m having trouble coming up with anyone who fit the criteria and could do something like this.”

“That’s because there isn’t anyone like that,” I muttered. My immediate family could pass through unhindered. Querit himself could. And that was the end of that list. “Someone could have stood outside the wards and done this, though.”

“Wouldn’t the divination components have detected them?”

“Unless they were really good, yes.”

The golem considered that for a second, then said, “Do you think one of Ammun’s mages came here to spy on us?”

“No. This isn’t anything like that. This is… as far as I can tell, something I never expected to see again. It doesn’t look quite right, but it’s close enough that I feel comfortable calling this an archmage’s knock.”

“I have no idea what that is,” Querit told me.

“It’s exactly what it sounds like – a way for archmages to announce their presence to each other without triggering a bunch of killing wards by trying to breach each other’s demesnes.”

I just had no idea who’d put it there. To the best of my knowledge, I was the only archmage on the planet until Ammun figured out a way to return, and I was starting to doubt his credentials anyway. Of course, there were still a lot of unexplored continents left. It was possible whole magical civilizations existed there, and we just hadn’t discovered them. Our recently adapted long-range scrying spells could let me see anywhere on the planet now, but I hadn’t really had the time to do it yet.

That sounded like yet another job to pass off to the gestalt, and one I probably should have asked them to do as soon as I’d completed those scrying polyhedrons. But no, I’d had legitimate concerns about keeping an eye on what Ammun was doing. He was an active threat, and I had limited resources and manpower. This… whatever this was, was something new.

“Do you know any other archmages?” Querit asked. “I was under the impression that magical culture had completely died out.”

“Me too. I guess maybe we were wrong about that. I wonder where they’re from, and what they want.”

I scried backward through time while I casually picked at the knot of mana. A middle-aged-looking man left the knock for me from about three miles away, outside the range of my wards’ detection capabilities, but not outside my own scrying abilities. I doubted that was a coincidence.

I studied him while he wove together the spell and embedded it in my demesne. He was tall, an inch or two over six feet, with a thick head of hair gone to gray the beginnings of crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. A close-cut beard lined his jaw, brown with more streaks of gray in it. I wasn’t willing to take that at face value, not when it was so easy to appear significantly younger than he actually was. He looked middle-aged because he chose to, not because he was actually in his forties or fifties.

Of more interest were his clothes. He was dressed in brown robes, simple and unadorned. Generally speaking, people with the level of power this man was displaying could afford to buy whatever clothes they wanted, so if he was wearing that, it was because he wanted to. It was a statement of some kind.

The robe vaguely reminded me of some monastic orders that had existed back in my old life, ones who mixed magic and spirituality together in a way I’d never quite found myself understanding the purpose of. It worked for them, though, and if their descendants were still around, maybe they’d done something right, after all.

Or it could just be a coincidence. Those kinds of people hardly had some sort of exclusive right to wearing plain brown robes even back in my last life. There was no telling how much things had drafted over a few thousand years.

I finished unraveling the knock while I studied the mage who’d left it. The pattern was a little different than I remembered, but once again, I was willing to blame that on millennia of culture drift. The important part was that the core of the knot contained a message, just like I’d expected it to.

‘Greetings, Keiran of the Night Vale. The Global Order of the Arcane would like to extend an invitation to meet with us regarding the recent events occurring in the Selivar Region, known locally as the kingdom of Ralvost. It has come to our attention that the lich lord known as Ammun Nescent has returned. You have been called upon to submit any and all information on this situation so that we can form an appropriate response. Please see the attached instructions for contacting us with a reply.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

‘Respectfully, Bakir Odrinac, Archmage of the Fifth Order’

It was a sort of mental image of the man I’d scried out speaking to me, along with the mana signature of a scrying beacon and general location of it to find him. The message itself faded away after I’d listened to it once, apparently not sophisticated enough to be repeatable.

“Well, I have some questions,” I said. “Have you heard of any of this stuff?”

I gave Querit the pertinent names, none of which he recognized. “If such an organization existed back in my time, it was not general knowledge. I would hazard a guess that it’s possible they formed post-cataclysm as a direct response to Ammun destroying a moon and shattering the world core.”

That was a fair guess. Something like that was certainly a good reason for the archmages of the time to put aside their differences and focus on mitigating the damage. But that just raised the question of what exactly had attracted their attention to this part of Manoch now. Ammun had been awake for years already.

“Is there any way we can find out more about these people before I agree to meet with them?” I asked. “Any books your creator left behind that might talk about them?”

I wasn’t eager to step into a cabal of archmages, all of whom had an unknown amount of strength. I was close to my former strength in terms of raw power and skill, but decidedly lacking in all the tools and workshops I’d built up over a thousand years. My ability to prepare for a battle was a mere shadow of what it used to be, so much so that I wasn’t confident I could learn anything at all about these new archmages.

Perhaps a meeting with this Bakir Odrinac was the best move. I could invite him into my demesne, where I’d be at the height of my power, and assess him before I agreed to talk to anyone else. If it seemed too risky, I’d just send him on his way. I’d tell him what his cabal wanted to know if there was some advantage to it, otherwise it’d just be one more potential problem to deal with.

I had plenty of things I needed to keep secret in my demesne, however. I would need to take steps to mitigate Bakir’s ability to snoop if I didn’t want him discovering my mana resonance point or moon core fragment. The labs were all individually warded, so the contents of those were safe. The petrified forest itself was impossible to hide. Anyone with eyes could simply look into the valley from miles away and see the trees.

A private room, warded against scrying and that my unexpected guest could be teleported directly into would be best. He might already know about Querit, but if not, this was a good way to hide the golem’s presence. It would also block him from detecting other mana sources inside my demesne. I just needed to set it up first.

* * *

The chamber was buried in the side of the mountain that made up the north slope of the valley. It was freshly formed, shaped entirely of magic and stocked with a few comfortable chairs and tables I’d picked up and put into storage for the next time I needed them. I spent the most effort on the wards, designed to completely isolate it from any and all outside influences. A scrying mirror provided the only access to the rest of the world, and without enchantments constantly recycling the air, anyone trapped in here would soon pass out and die.

One half of the room was filled with furniture and other comforts. The other half was a ritual summoning circle designed to bring my guest directly to me, assuming he was cooperative. I’d given strong consideration to lacing the room with traps just in case negotiations broke down, but I’d decided against it.

It was possible these people could become important allies. I did still have a world core to save, after all, and any help I could get would make things easier. A cabal of archmages would be highly motivated to assist with that goal, so I was hopeful that this meeting would end with us on good terms. Summoning their representative into a deathtrap probably wasn’t the best way to facilitate that goal.

Once I’d finished the prep work and relayed instructions to Querit on keeping himself out of sight just in case things went poorly, I reached out through the mirror and found the scrying beacon Bakir’s message had directed me to. I found it immediately, and as soon as I did, the archmage himself noted the connection.

‘Ah. Archmage Keiran, I presume?’ he mentally projected.

‘The same,’ I sent back. ‘I received your message that you wished to speak.’

I hadn’t been expecting to have a telepathic conversation, but that was also fine. The meeting room could sit here collecting dust until I needed it for something else, and this was probably safer for both of us, anyway.

‘Very much so,’ Balkir sent. ‘It seems you’ve been quite busy since your reincarnation. We didn’t even realize you’d returned until Ammun started up again, to be truthful. I’m afraid we all rather thought that project of yours was something of a fool’s errand, but, well, here you are. I guess you showed us! Ha!’

‘I hadn’t realized my works were so well known,’ I thought sourly. ‘I suppose everything came out after my death when my vaults and workshops were raided.’

‘More or less, yes. Not all of it, but I’m told there were plenty of people interested in knowing what your final fate was after two hundred years with no word from you.’

It wasn’t a new concept for me. I’d discovered the remains of the Night Vale where Ammun’s tower now stood—a fact I still hadn’t forgiven him for—and knew that the home had been pillaged. I even had an old mysteel vault door I’d salvaged and had been using for scraps to run my biometal experiments sitting in my phantom space. It still rankled every time I thought of the delicate instruments being destroyed and my life’s work being carted off.

‘There were some unexpected complications to my reincarnation,’ I said. ‘And the world appears to have fallen apart while I was gone.’

‘True. I suppose you’ve invested some considerable effort into catching up on everything that happened between your death and rebirth?’

‘As much as I could,’ I sent. ‘I’ve obviously missed a few things, as I’ve never heard of the Global Order of the Arcane.’

‘Ah!’ Balkir sounded excited now. ‘A proper introduction is in order then. Might I trouble you for an invitation into your demesne?’

Apparently, we were going to be doing this face-to-face after all. ‘I have a summoning circle set up to bring you in,’ I told my fellow archmage.

‘Perfect. Give me just a moment and I’ll be ready.’