"I have seen it. I have seen the blue sky. One more push, past the humans and their armies, and we can be free. We can settle and build homes for our children to sleep in. Beds for our parents to lie on. One more push, my brothers and sisters, and then we are home."
This speech was overheard by Irona, someone whose ears I trust over my own, between a Champion and his party, Elven in nature. Too tall to be natural, too strong to be mortal, but so very sapient. They ambushed us not four hours later as my companions argued over the morality of killing fleeing civilians.
We never found any children. No parents. I buried Tomson this morning. I tried to console his husband as we broke camp. Fuck the Champions.
Kill them all.
Excerpt from The Beasts of the Dungeon.
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The Academy of Ethereal Arts. A place he'd spent months in, months and months, back when it had been used to manufacture Archmages.
Well, he'd been in a copy, and the school hadn't ever succeeded in its mission, but close enough. It was a place he knew quite well, even after all this time, and a place he'd made his first actual friend.
Nora.
A bloodthirsty, isolated Elf whom he'd sworn an oath to, something that experts agreed had been both foolish and hasty. But it had seemed like the right thing to do at the time, and these days experts didn't dare call him stupid anyway.
The last time he'd been here, he had been inside. A face in the crowd, with the windows showing a pretty but fake outside world. One he couldn't go into, since the whole scenario had been about the school.
He was not a face in the crowd this time. This world was not fake, and its people were the great, great, great—and probably a few more greats—descendants of those who he'd 'known'.
Xathar walked forward slowly, preening at the welcome. The whole school had been shepherded outside; students lined up in military grids as the teachers formed a line near the front. Four companies of guards were stationed at the flanks, armor gleaming in the midday sun.
Marcus was here to read their records and possibly steal some books. He'd probably be gone in a day, if that. Their preparations almost made him feel guilty. Almost.
A man stepped forward, one dressed far too well to be anything but nobility. Nobility or the headmaster, though Marcus supposed he could be both. Neither? No, that made no sense.
…He should probably have slept for more than four hours last night, but what he was calling the Mirror Dimension had been fascinating.
Not that he'd gotten any luck with entering it again. The Hound had sparked the latest visit, but before then he'd been in the School of Life. It being connected to the Dungeon was possible, being a trap or adjacent, but then why would the Dungeon help him? His portal spell had noticeably improved, after all.
Nor had he found even a hint of this kind of behavior in the Beasts of the Dungeon. Found no hint that the Dungeon was in any way sentient or sapient. He could ask Vistus, but while he was growing to like the man, this was far too potentially useful to spoil.
Vistus had been kind, helpful and apologetic after—and even during—the invasion, but back then Marcus had very little worth taking. This, though? Access to other realities, close but not identical to their own?
No sense in tempting a recovering alcoholic with wine.
Marcus focused when Xathar shifted, returning to the present. The headmaster, who looked dignified enough Marcus just knew he was a Headmaster instead of a headmaster, was hesitating. Having stepped forwards and being promptly ignored, which he should have felt bad about, but then Marcus always had enjoyed making powerful people squirm.
Elly had ensured him that was perfectly normal, as had Vess, which meant he was going to need to work on it. If those two approved, a demon and a war-hardened Queen, it had no place in his delicate mind.
Yeah, he really needed a nap. Either way, the Headmaster. Marcus cleared his throat. "Greetings."
"Hail, Archmage," the man responded, bowing low. The whole assembly joined him, from the teachers to the students, and Marcus noted how much nobility there was. Particularly in the student body, which while all dressed the same, held themselves a certain way. The Headmaster straightened after a long second. "Our Academy is at your disposal, honored King."
Smooth. Recognizing him as an Archmage and then foreign royalty. If Vess was here she'd have responded with something suitably snide, no doubt, but Marcus was too busy coming to conclusions.
The Academy of Ethereal Arts was a boarding school for the nobility. A place for them to connect with peers, to hone their skills, and to make the family proud. Oh silent Gods, he would have hated studying here.
"Thank you for hosting me and mine," Marcus replied, speech running almost entirely on the lines Vess had drilled into him. Being rude was fine, she'd said, but only on purpose. "I would like to have a look at your records, particularly the records of all students that have studied at your institution. Your library is also of some interest to me."
The Headmaster frowned, a smooth but fake smile on his face. "Of course, Archmage. I doubt our athenaeum has anything that would interest one such as yourself, but it is open to you. As for our records, their usefulness will depend on how far you wish to go back. There was a fire two hundred and eighty years ago, and much was lost."
Of course. Marcus smiled politely, not answering as Xathar continued onward. The Headmaster moved aside, the entire student body as silent as the grave.
How much potential was here? How much power and politics and secret alliances? And here he was, cutting through it all because he had dreamed of stars. How many soldiers could their families marshal? How much knowledge did they have, both mundane and magical, secreted away in private libraries?
And all of it was nothing to him. Not in an insulting way, though he disliked the environment, but more because he was apathetic. Yes, these people could advance his own Academy by decades. But poaching students or staff would bring more trouble than it was worth, not to mention invite Imperial scrutiny into his very home, and none of it mattered.
He was here to see if Nora had been real, and that was pretty much it. A long-dead, maybe non-existent Elf was the whole reason for this detour. The whole reason all these prim and proper scions were lined up, and had been lined up for hours.
Nora would have liked that, he thought.
The Academy itself was different from what he remembered. Unsurprising, perhaps, but jarring all the same. Six centuries had passed, six hundred years of change and growth and decay. A fire had broken out, apparently, and a dozen more things had undoubtedly gone wrong.
The Headmaster was walking behind him, Marcus' guards keeping a close eye on the man, but he ignored them. Kept walking, inspecting a place he shouldn't feel as connected to as he did.
It was empty, what with the students being outside, but it didn't matter. He walked, hallways changed yet the same, and kept walking as his feet guided him to a classroom. A classroom in which he'd been told to put his pencil down over and over, and the only reset point he was likely ever to visit.
The siege had been in some small, unimportant castle. The mountain town could have been just about anywhere in the Empire. But here?
Marcus opened the door, and there it was. And there it also wasn't, because the door no longer looked upon the board. Now it faced the wall, the entire room having turned forty five degrees to the side.
He sighed, turning to the Headmaster. "Your records room, if you please."
"Of course," the man replied, gesturing down the hall. "I would be happy to call on the staff to aid in your search."
"We'll manage. Please, don't let me take any more of your day. I'm sure the students are tired of standing outside."
The Headmaster, a man whose name he hadn't asked for and frankly didn't care about, smiled blandly. "They are honored to welcome one such as you."
Gods help him if the entire Empire was going to be this hollow. Marcus hummed noncommittally, spotting the library before the man could point it out. Still in the same place, though different looking.
"Thank you," Marcus said, opening the door. "I will be sure to inform you when I depart."
A dismissal, and the Headmaster's role as dutiful host cracked. Not much, but the man was clearly used to being, well, in charge. Respected. But he left all the same, bowing his head as Marcus' guards took up positions near the door.
Marcus grunted as Xathar nibbled on some abandoned paper. "Find me their student records."
His mages obeyed, several divination spells weaving together. Not his best subject by far, and frankly he didn't find it too useful, but this was a place of information. And if divination liked one thing, it was information.
Marcus hummed lightly as he waited, some old tune he couldn't remember ever learning, and looked around. Different yet the same, something which kept coming to mind. The size was almost identical, the layout wasn't. Same rough number of books, bigger—and fewer—bookcases.
It took some minutes, but his people found a storage container. A semi-hidden back room, infrequently used considering all the dust on the boxes, but isolated. Dark and temperature stable, if he had the layout right in his head.
He stepped back as the boxes were taken into the library proper, and soon enough his people were going through it. They had a name, species and gender, which was more than enough to narrow down the list. But there was a problem, because of course there was.
Too few boxes.
Thousands of names, but after half an hour only three admission records had been found from before the fire. He was glad he'd insisted his guards should be literate. Going through all this himself would have taken the rest of the day.
Marcus wasn't particularly concerned with essentially taking over the library, so onward they went. Magic became useless once the location had been found, so he occupied the time by browsing the shelves.
…If those books had repeated information, he'd probably have burned the place down while having a massive panic attack.
But no, just regular old books. Introductions into a dozen fields, mass produced and nameless, alongside personal diaries of a hundred mages. A whole history he'd probably never learn, though the knowledge itself was rather useless.
One fairly good book about healing magic, a thin tome on space which was filled with information so obvious he was almost insulted, and that was about it. Shame, but then he had the feeling this institution didn't teach past the intermediate level.
He'd passed intermediate magic at the age of thirteen.
"Your servants are finding nothing," Xathar rumbled, sticking his head between the row of bookshelves. Marcus turned, raising an eyebrow. "The fire took all but fourteen records, most partially damaged. I am still owed noble flesh to hunt."
Marcus rolled his eyes. "Eat, not hunt, and you'll get your meal. They went through everything?"
"So they say. I smell their fear. Fear that they have disappointed you. You have administered your beatings well, balancing terror with dependence. I am proud."
"I know that you know humans don't do that. Or at least that I didn't do that. But if there's nothing, there's nothing. A shame. Oberon!"
The mage came scurrying into view, head bowed and hands hidden behind his back. "Archmage?"
"Add this book to our storage. And good work. It was a long shot anyway."
Oberon nodded rapidly. "Thank you, Archmage. At once."
So damn servile. The book was handed over and the mage vanished, but his eyes caught an unmarked tome as he left. Bound in something that wasn't quite leather, though thankfully it wasn't human skin either.
Marcus hummed, picking it from the shelves. 'Break into tombs, avoid death. A curse-breakers guide to riches' was written on the first page, more scrawl than script. He leafed through it out of sheer curiosity, finding it filled with diagrams and vocabulary rather more advanced than most of the rest of the library.
Interesting. Another gift from the ever generous Headmaster, I'm thinking.
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He reclined further against Xathar, the demon sitting on the floor and mournfully glancing at the duck he'd killed. Apparently the 'quackers' Xathar was used to did things like drink blood and telekinetically augment their strength, only to find out this one couldn't do either.
Marcus hadn't seen the demon so distraught over a dead being in… ever.
At least the Academy was behind them. A very short stay, in the end, but it had never been more than a minor detour. Now a fire was burning, Xathar was mourning, and he was reading a stolen magical book as his guards made sure he didn't get ambushed in his sleep.
Normal stuff.
The book he was reading was a relatively good one, even. Not too entertaining, but filled with knowledge. Knowledge about runes, specifically, though written through a curse-breaking lens. The runes, though. It was filling in gaps between the solid but relatively basic understanding he'd mastered during his youth, and the nearly indecipherable language that was the School of Life.
His Kingdom really did have basically nothing when it came to magical knowledge, he was learning. Which was fine when dealing with minor threats, but they were part of the Empire now.
Vistus could have, he'd only recently realized, requisitioned fifty necromancers and drowned his entire Kingdom in undead. Summoned a proper array of minions instead of just birds, and could have tasked his mages with more than support and the occasional fireball.
The whole invasion was kind of condescending, looking back. But that was the past, and he was going to make sure his Academy trained mages even the Empire would be wary of. Mages in large enough numbers to seal off Mirrania, should that become necessary.
He might be an Archmage, but frankly, the Empire wasn't anything he particularly cared about. His own Kingdom was his responsibility, he'd accepted that, but voluntarily taking on more? No way in all the Hells.
And if anyone ever pushed him to become Emperor, he was going to start stabbing. With his mace. So crushing, really, but then that sounded so violent. …Unlike stabbing? Anyway.
Another page was turned, another runic formation puzzled over, and Xathar kept sighing dramatically at having killed his new friend. Marcus hummed and petted the demon idly, putting the book away after the words started blurring together.
He needed sleep. And he would sleep, soon enough, but first he wanted to take another crack at entering the Mirror Dimension. The place between realities, him and other versions of him either being brought together outside of time or being lucky enough to pick the same moments to visit.
That or there were so many it was nearly guaranteed to find someone. He didn't know, and he loathed not knowing. Loathed being ignorant of something so interesting. Something that powerful.
A dozen of himself, a hundred, all sharing and refining information. All helping to lift up the whole, sheer curiosity driving the effort forwards. He was curious, after all. Almost unbearably so. Even if his alternate selves lived different lives, made different choices, he could barely fathom them not possessing that.
Without curiosity Marcus was no one at all.
So he closed his eyes, slowing his breathing and calming his mind. It had been a connection to a Hound that sparked the feeling, last time, and now he wanted to do it without that. Craft a spell, perhaps, to make contact reliable.
No spell came to mind. No matrix he was familiar with could even begin to accomplish something like that. The suspicion that it was Archmage related solidified into near certainty, which meant it wasn't logic or effort that could bring him there.
Feeling. Connection. Things Elly went on and on about for Life Enhancement, mostly to not-him. Her students sure seemed to find meaning in it, but he never quite did. Magic was structure. Mathematics and geometry. Not wishing really hard and hugging trees.
Which, yes, that was an oversimplification that would get him glared at, but he was annoyed. Irritated. Downright cranky. And he couldn't exactly vent against his guards, so there was nothing to do but glare into the evening sky.
Tomorrow he'd link back up with Elly, see what she thought about the Mirror Dimension, then finally see the Dungeon with his own eyes. Maybe get some more sixth-tier practice in, which Vistus' books did supply exercises for.
So much to do.
Marcus watched his guards as the rotation changed, silver being pressed against bare flesh and code words rattled off in quick bites of sound. Mages checked to ensure no one had been compromised, divination and basic magical perception doing eighty percent of the work, while Life Enhanced soldiers listened to people's souls.
A whole ecosystem, rotating around and around until nothing and no one could get inside. Presumably, anyway. No defense was perfect, no detection was foolproof.
Eh. Marcus stretched, startling Xathar out of his grieving and feeling the demon return to his own plane. Which was annoying, because Xathar hadn't waited until Marcus was no longer using him as a backrest.
Right, sleep. Marcus pulled his blanket out and altered the earth with a minor elemental matrix, building what he was pretty sure amounted to a nest, and a dozen little telekinetic arms worked together to disassemble the fire.
Magic, good for everything from reality-altering horror to enabling laziness.
Now sleep. No Mirror Dimension, no runic arrays interacting with spatial spells, no sixth tier exercises and no theft. Just sleep. Though, if I interlaced runes with stability without altering their power fluctuations, I could probably increase efficiency by eliminating some waste in the…