The more time I spent talking to Bakir, the more I became certain that he was only at stage five or six. That didn’t automatically disqualify him from the title of archmage, as it was more of an indicator of skill and knowledge than of raw power, but it did make me question the strength of his organization as a whole.

It made sense, once I thought about it. One of the problems I’d had to overcome to climb beyond stage six was that with mana no longer being freely available in the environment, there probably wasn’t a single natural resonance point on the planet. Even back in my previous life, they’d been extremely rare natural phenomena.

I’d had to forge an artificial one, something I’d only been able to accomplish so quickly because of Querit’s expertise and assistance. There was no telling how many years of experiments it would have taken to work out the process on my own. It was possible the Global Order of the Arcane knew how to make a resonance point, or that they’d somehow shielded one from unraveling a thousand years ago and had kept it intact all this time.

It was also possible that no one in their ranks had advanced past stage six, which meant they were completely locked out of the upper echelon of master-tier spells, the ones that couldn’t be cast using regular mana. If that was the case, it also meant the Order was absolutely not a threat to me, and even better, that I had something they desperately needed, even if they didn’t know it.

How best to go about using that to my advantage? What did I need that they could provide? More mysteel was welcome, of course. I had nowhere near enough of it. Raw mana couldn’t hurt, but at best that would just save me time. It wouldn’t solve my issues with advancing to stage nine on its own, no matter how much of it there was. That involved reforging my physical body into something like a solid mage’s shadow, something that could exist inside the Astral Realm and even allow my consciousness to remain intact if my body were somehow destroyed.

It was in fact the basis for my reincarnation magic, which had worked from a technical viewpoint, but hadn’t really achieved everything I’d been going for. Specifically, losing a few thousand years between my death and rebirth had been an unexpected twist that had completely ruined my original plans. I couldn’t even begin to express how different the world would be right now if I’d been able to regain access to the Night Vale and my full power within a decade of dying.

By the time I was finished sharing what information I felt like giving to my fellow archmage, he’d long since given up trying to interrupt me with clarifying questions and had sunk into a sort of stupefied horror. It was only after I went silent that he finally roused himself in his seat and said, “Well, that is… certainly a lot to take in. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at Ammun’s casual cruelty. All of our records indicated that he was a very selfish man. Given his personal power, it’s a terrifying combination.”

“All powerful mages are selfish,” I said. “It’s how we get so powerful to begin with.”

“Not all of us!” Bakir protested.

“That just means you’re not powerful enough yet,” I said with a dark chuckle. “Trust me, at some point you’ll have to decide between power or principles. If you haven’t had to face that decision, well, you got lucky and someone else carried you along on their own path. You don’t get the luxury of morals when you’re fighting to survive.”

“That’s an incredibly bleak outlook.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “It is.”

Silence stretched out between us for what I was sure Bakir found to be an uncomfortably long moment while I studied his reaction. He quickly broke it by standing and saying, “I think I have obtained everything I need to know, but might I be able to call upon you again if the Order has any further questions?”

“You are welcome to leave another knock in my wards,” I said. “I can’t promise when I’ll be able to respond. I have quite a bit of work to get done and not a lot of time to do it in.”

“Erm, yes. Quite so. Regardless, you have my thanks for your hospitality and for allowing me to impose upon your schedule today.”

The Bakir of right now was considerably different than the one who’d greeted me. Gone was any semblance of warmth and congeniality. Instead, he looked harrowed and exhausted, no doubt a reaction to finding out that it was entirely possible the whole world would be threatened by a reawakened lich, now truly immortal with a nigh-infinite source of mana and an unassailable home for his phylactery.

Seeing how poorly he was taking the news was yet further proof that he might be an archmage on paper, but he wasn’t one in reality. I opened the way for him to leave and wondered who would come calling upon me from his organization next, and if they’d be receptive to making a deal or two.

* * *

“I went through everything we recovered from the archives,” Querit told me. “I’m confident the Global Order of the Arcane did not exist prior to the breaking of the world. If it did, they were either so small as to be unnoticed by anything but local powers, or so incredibly well-hidden that only the greatest of powers knew of their existence.”

Stolen novel; please report.

“And you don’t think it was the last one,” I said. That more or less lined up with what Bakir himself had told me of their history.

“I do not,” the golem said. He was reshelving a pile of books almost as tall as I was, rapidly slipping them back into their assigned spaces using some logical scheme I wasn’t privy to.

“Which means that it’s entirely likely that none or very few of them were alive prior to the world core dying. So none of them have access to a mana resonance point.”

“Ah, I see,” Querit said, pausing in his work. “You’re speculating that at best, their strongest are only stage six.”

“It’s only a theory. It’s possible they made their own resonance point just like we did. The knowledge obviously existed back then.”

“It did, but it wasn’t common. My creator was a researcher with a powerful backer. The things we worked on weren’t by any means something a regular mage or even an archmage would have access to.”

“Which just means it’s even more likely than I thought that the very best of them is still no higher than stage six, and that they most likely won’t be leaving their genius loci behind to travel to another continent. Bakir’s going to have a long, expensive journey home, and whoever comes next will have an equally long journey back. I’d say we’ve got a week or two before we can expect a visitor.”

“You’re sure they’ll send someone else? Why not just negotiate through Bakir if that was what they wanted?”

“Bakir’s a field investigator. His job is to gather information and report it back for other people to make decisions. Either they’ll think what’s going on here is important enough to send someone with real power, or they won’t. Considering what’s at stake if we fail to stop Ammun, I can’t imagine they’ll be content to ignore it.”

“And in the meantime, we’ll continue with our own preparations?” Querit asked. At my nod, he continued, “Would you like to do anything in particular to get ready for the arrival of what could possibly be a few dozen archmages?”

“If they’re all as weak at their representative, I’m not concerned. If more than one or two are as strong as Ammun or me, there’s nothing we can do that would stop them from getting in.”

That didn’t mean I didn’t have plans for it. If anything, Ammun’s appearance in the sky over my demesne just long enough to drop one spell on me last year had proven I was a fool to assume he couldn’t get to me. The amount of mana it had cost him was prohibitive and he’d barely stayed for a few seconds before disappearing again, but that move had taken me by surprise and allowed a few dozen of his minions inside my defenses.

Of course, it wouldn’t have happened that way if he hadn’t picked the moment I was at my absolute weakest to strike, but that excuse felt a little thin when I considered how much potential damage those invaders could have done. I’d made it a priority to shore up those potential weaknesses in the future, which meant I’d already proofed the valley against hostile archmages as well as I possibly could with my current limitations.

“How did the new biometal experiments work out?” I asked, changing the subject.

“I think we’re heading in the right direction now, but I’m worried about how replicable it will be,” Querit said. “No one but you can process the mysteel for the elixirs.”

“That’s fine. I don’t need a technique that can be used by any random mage. I just need a quick way to grow mysteel in large quantities. Once we reach the threshold, I don’t care if the recipe never gets used again.”

“In that case, give me about five hundred gallons more of that elixir, and I’m confident that we can grow that much weight back in biometal. I want to test it for possible adverse reactions over the next few months, but assuming the sample survives, you’ll need to head back out and capture a few more of them to ramp things up.”

Maybe that was a job I could pawn off on the supposed archmages I was sure were going to be showing up. It should be within their abilities to complete without getting themselves killed, even if none of them were any stronger than Bakir. I’d keep that on hand as a bargaining chip to use when I revealed that I had control of a resonance point.

Querit finished up his work and turned to face me fully. “I have a question,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“Do you think our priorities are right? We’re devoting an awful lot of effort to the long-term problem of fixing the world. Maybe we should be preparing for Ammun’s inevitable return instead.”

“We’re doing both.”

“We are, but it’s clear where the majority of our time is going.”

“I get what you’re saying, but you have to understand that I did a lot of my preparations for fighting Ammun back before we ever met. I was hoping to use them on him when I chased him up to Yulitar, but the environment there was so difficult to function in that I didn’t get the chance.”

“That was before we learned about his plans to tie himself to a moon core,” Querit said. “Surely things are different now.”

“More difficult, maybe, but my plan hasn’t really changed that much. And I’ve gotten stronger, too.”

Our first real fight had occurred when I was at stage five. I’d beaten him, but only because he’d been freshly awakened and near starved for mana. The second battle had gone to him. I’d barely survived the golem he’d brought with him, one that wasn’t even specialized for combat, thanks to the difficulty of fighting in an environment with low gravity and no breathable atmosphere.

Now, my core had reached stage eight and our next encounter would take place on Manoch. Ammun would have unlimited mana to fight with, but that didn’t guarantee victory. It simply became one more obstacle for me to overcome.

“Maybe you should be focusing your efforts on reaching stage nine,” Querit said.

“I don’t know if there’s enough time for that, but I’m going to try,” I said, only partially a lie. “If this organization has the resources I hope they do, gaining access to them will be part of the price I extract from them. That will hopefully be enough to push me to where I need to be.”

“And if they don’t?”

I shook my head. “Then we’ll figure something else out.”

Querit was a bit of a worrier, but in this case, he wasn’t wrong to be concerned. I knew how I planned to defeat Ammun. I just wasn’t sure if I could pull it off. Even if I did manage to ascend to stage nine and reclaim all my former strength, that still might not be enough.

Or maybe I was overthinking things, and I could easily crush him as I was right now. Time would tell.