Emperor Forged Page 9

  The technical terms were “ephemeral” for magic that faded and “permanent” for magic that didn’t. These terms were rarely used by anybody other than mages, so I left them out for Hish. Most schools of magic were devoted to one or the other. Enchantment and rune-crafting was almost always permanent. By contrast, channeling and disruption were almost always ephemeral. Almost all battle magic was ephemeral as well, given that it was typically simplified channeling. Not that these were the only schools.

  “So, what, your magic sticks around longer than mine? Or is it the opposite?” Hish said. She began to mutter to herself as she tried to connect this lesson to her original reason for dragging me in here. “Wait, is it because you didn’t make those runes yourself? Then it’s because my magic lasts forever.”

  I sighed. “No, it has nothing to do with that, and I do craft my own runes. We use two different methods of magic. I use sorcery, which draws on magical energy from the magical plane. You use spiritual techniques, which draw on astral energy from the astral plane. The two don’t mix, at least not without an explosion.

  “Magical energy is what makes up life itself, whether it be the scales of a dragon or the essence of plant life. It is present everywhere, save for the badlands, where no life can sustain itself. Humans rely on the omnipresence of magical energy for our sorcery, as we actually have small magical reserves. We instead rely on the magical energy around us. Other races generate magical energy within themselves and use that to power their magic.”

  Hish was making a face of surprise as if something was connecting deep within her mind. She clicked her tongue in annoyance. “So what’s so special about this spiritual stuff?”

  “Astral energy is the stuff of souls,” I said, getting her to blink and bringing her full attention upon me. “It is extremely powerful and highly unstable, and the only beings known to use it directly are the Archangel Myrael and the heathen gods of ancient myth. Spiritualism, using spiritual techniques, is a method of drawing on astral energy safely. A lot of the power, none of the flexibility. You would have spent a lot of time training repetitively to cast even simple spells, correct?”

  “Repetitive, yeah,” Hish said, looking mesmerized. “That describes pretty much my entire childhood. Learning how to run faster, swing harder, jump higher. So it’s really because we’re super awesome and can do this stuff that humans can’t?” She was beginning to bounce up and down on her cushion. Humans actually could use spiritual techniques, although most were awful at it. I didn’t want to ruin Hish’s mood, though, so I remained silent on that point.

  “You have noticed the gap between your abilities and pretty much all the humans under my command?” I asked.

  “True… But then why do our elders restrict us demi-oni to sex with humans while we’re fighting?” she said, thinking out loud. “I figured to learn something amazing from you because you’re so much stronger than every other human. I thought even a demi-oni like me might be able to match Miya with your help, but now…”

  I had no words for what I was hearing. The single-horned oni were not allowed to reproduce with one another while in the military, except with humans? This would be a difficult situation, even if I knew the entire story, as I felt I could hear self-deprecation in Hish’s voice for the first time since I had met her. Without knowing anything about the oni beyond those fighting under me, I was at a loss. She had called herself a demi-oni, even. I had thought that was a racial slur.

  Sticking to what I did know, I said boldly, “You still had the right idea. I use the same magic as all other humans—evocation—and outperform them. There’s nothing to say that you can’t become as strong or stronger than Miyasa. It’s down to you.”

  Hish bobbed her head up and down before gulping down her now-cold tea. “So it is just training. I just can’t shortcut it with you like I hoped, although you need to teach me more of this theory junk like how to explode stuff.”

  Then she rushed out of the room. The door nearly slammed into the wall on her way out. She was a ball of energy, that was for sure. My tea was cold, and I had no interest in finishing it, so instead, I busied myself with cleaning things up.

  Closing the door behind me, I found that I wasn’t alone in the hallway, which was odd. This part of the officer quarters wasn’t occupied by anybody other than Hish at present. A single lamp burned with magical light, as we conserved energy with so few left in the fortress and so few foes to worry about. I should have been able to quietly trek back to the grand hall, alone with my thoughts.

  “Providing a private lesson?” Ilsa asked me, her tone placid as she leaned against the far wall near the lamp. I questioned if this was truly Ilsa.

  Chapter 14

  Checking my memory, I didn’t recall missing any meetings or agreeing to discuss anything with Ilsa. This situation felt off.

  “She wanted to learn about magic, but we both know I can’t really teach her,” I explained.

  Drawing a rune on the inside of my palm, I walked up to Ilsa and caught her by the side. “This isn’t really the best place for a chat. What are you doing down here?”

  She blushed, looking away as I channeled magic into her body through the path of the rune I had drawn earlier. No reaction, which meant it was extremely unlikely there was any illusion magic at play. Only two people in the Empire could completely defeat my runes like this: one was missing and the other was so far away I was unconcerned about her.

  “I wanted to talk and noticed you were down here. Alone with Hish,” Ilsa said, still not looking at me. “What exactly was it you cast on me right now?”

  “A rune to disrupt illusions. It interferes with the flow of magical energy, causing almost any illusion to visibly shimmer or break,” I said.

  Ilsa scowled, finally looking up at me as we rounded a corner. There was more light in the hallways as we approached the grand hall, but she took us away from the stairwell that led inside. Instead, we were heading upstairs to the other officers’ quarters.

  “Is it really so bad that I wanted to see you?” she asked, the hurt visible in her eyes as well as in her tone.

  I needed to show caution here. Telling Ilsa that she was usually more structured in her approach to things seemed like a poor decision. My emotional intelligence had often been described as a quantity small enough to scarcely fill a teaspoon, but even I could detect that this was not something I wanted to tackle so bluntly.

  I deflected. “You’ve never dealt with mystic foxes before, have you? They have essentially perfect illusions, due to their abilities being able to bend space itself. The reason those ballista bolts your father used from Talepolis were so special was that the barriers that mystic foxes use are something of a magical oddity, and their illusions are the same thing.”

  “Don’t they have several gigantic tails almost as large as they are? I can’t imagine any illusion hiding those,” Ilsa said.

  “That’s where the spatial part comes in. The weaker foxes can only hide them from sight, but the more experienced agents do something to hide their very being, tails and all.” I stroked my beard, considering some particular foxes and their tricks. “I have been wondering if Lyria would send some of their to agents infiltrate us.”

  Ilsa stopped me from walking any farther. Her quarters were ahead, meaning we had arrived at our destination. That meant it was time to end this conversation.

  Or so I thought, until she opened the door and gestured me inside after her. The room was more austere than Hish’s, mostly containing books and papers. Tomes and textbooks I recognized from my days in the mage towers were neatly stacked on a bookshelf, dozens of bookmarks filling them for Ilsa’s future reference. I assumed the papers were reports and other administrative minutiae. The room was clean and bare otherwise, the bed neatly made up.

  “Shouldn’t you be able to tell from my magical aura that I’m me?” Ilsa asked me as she sat at the table stacked high with papers.

  Taking the unspoken invitation, I sat down opposite her an
d shuffled the papers to one side so I could see Ilsa’s face.

  “Powerful illusions hide one’s magical aura as well. That’s where physical contact comes in. It’s the same with detecting vampiric thralls,” I explained, frowning as I remembered a topic I needed to talk to Ilsa about. “Did you ever receive training in the Empire’s technique for that?”

  “Detecting thralls was part of induction as an adept into my mage tower, and it was also part of officer training. I’ll need to reference the manual, given how many years it’s been, however.” Ilsa paused. “You’re worried about Talepolis?”

  I nodded. “Thralling anybody is illegal, punishable by death, in the Empire. But it was often overlooked in my experience. I’ve seen what thralldom does to people, the way their minds are twisted through mental control in service to their master. The only cure is either their death or that of the vampire that thralled them.”

  The atmosphere grew heavy, neither of us talking. I glanced at one of the pieces of paper nearby. A report about the seizure of arrows and bows from an abandoned Imperial outpost to the south. Otwin was retreating without resisting us.

  “It seems so lopsided, dealing with vampires,” Ilsa said, leaning over the table with one hand over her face. “Treat them as carefully as you like and it can all go wrong in an instant. All you need to do is drink a drop of their blood and it’s all over.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “That’s nightwalkers, and they’re the least of our worries. As mages, being turned into one of their decrepit thralls would require a lot more than a drop of blood, due to our innate magic resistance. No, it’s the daywalker vampires we have to worry about.”

  Chuckling, I recalled some old tales. “We had a list back in royal court of all the things to watch for, what the various vampires could do and couldn’t do. Don’t enter this vampire’s manor. Don’t let this vampire sing anywhere. This vampire can’t have anybody as his direct subordinate for this length of time. It was all arcane bullshit. To even get close to an imperial court, daywalkers had to prove their method of thralldom on a prisoner who was sentenced to death.”

  It was so stupid when I thought back on it. The worst part was the sheer amount of testing that needed to be done. I recalled the fear in the eyes of the mages as they regularly tested everybody for thralldom, afraid that the result would be positive and that they would be killed to silence them. Somehow, nobody in the courts themselves was ever thralled. Perhaps any occurrences were merely covered up.

  I looked up to see Ilsa smiling at me.

  “Was it something I said?” I asked.

  “These stories of yours. My memories are always so dark, of watching corruption in the towers and being told how we could never stop a vampire if he thralled somebody,” Ilsa said. “Now you say that the Imperial Knights had this absurd list to manage everything, normalizing something that utterly terrified me and so many other mages. Like dealing with people who could mentally dominate other people was just another Tuesday.”

  Well, it was just another Tuesday. Dragons who could level the capital in a fit of rage, vampires who could mentally dominate everybody present by simply singing, dwarves presenting ancient weapons capable of bending causality, mystic foxes who occasionally teleported in and out of proceedings because they got bored. Then there was us, the Imperial Knights, who had to keep this pack of unruly nonhumans in line while the bureaucrats and officials kept the court going.

  I did not miss my days as an Imperial Knight.

  Ilsa was avoiding my eyes again, looking flushed and uncertain. Something had happened in her mind while I was off on my own mental adventure.

  “How do you see me, Mykah?” Ilsa suddenly blurted out, staring into my eyes.

  “You’re my strategist and are essentially running my logistics. You’ve proven yourself to be everything I ever hoped you could be when I first heard a sharp-tongued teenager tell her commanding mage how he should really deal with the oni down in those muddy trenches,” I said, casting my memory back a fair way. The idiot had struck her for that. I didn’t remove him from command immediately, but he soon proved that he was not worthy of staying in command. As my new adjutant, Ilsa had been able to escape him and use that mind of hers, which was being wasted as a mere battlemage.

  “That’s… Yes, but what am I to you, Mykah? Personally,” Ilsa pushed, twisting her body from side to side.

  Oh, in that way. “Right now? Somebody whom I rely on and know well,” I said, watching as her face began to fall. “From now on? That is up to you. I could do with knowing you a lot better so that you don’t feel the need to stand outside the bedroom of another woman because you think I’m having sex with her.”

  There was that tomato face again. “I want to be so much more than just somebody you rely on, Mykah. Somebody who tells you how to achieve what you were already going to do. The Empire has always needed to change, and you are going to change it. I want to be that change with you. More than just a strategist.”

  Black hair, red eyes, and a pair of razor-sharp fangs filled my mind for a split second. I brushed the ancient memory away and focused on the woman in front of me.

  “Was that so hard?” I asked her.

  Then I walked around the table and kissed her. She gasped and I slipped my tongue into her open mouth. I held the kiss, enjoying the taste of her lips. Her hands wandered along my body as she finally began to kiss back.

  Ilsa found her way into my pants by the time she pulled away. I hardened in her hands as she stared at me, her eyes wet with desire.

  “Your bed, or should we move to mine?” I whispered in her ear.

  She shuddered and looked at her bed for a long time. My length was still in her hands. I nibbled on her ear, eliciting a moan.

  “Don’t,” she moaned. I stopped and pulled back, looking down at her but doing nothing. She pouted at me. “I didn’t actually mean stop.”

  I suppressed a laugh and kissed her, my hands pulling at her clothes. She began to undo my trousers in return but I was faster at this game. Her round, perky breasts sprang free before she even began to lower my pants. I began to massage her chest, taking pleasure in the soft feel of them.

  Ilsa allowed herself to be distracted for several moments, smiling gently at me. Then we slipped off our remaining clothes and kissed again. I could feel myself against her now. My hands sunk into her firm ass, moments before I lifted her up into my arms. She broke the kiss and cried out, but I muffled her surprise with my lips and carried her to the bed.

  Once I laid her down on the bed, she grew more excited. Her eyes were fixed on where we would connect, her cheeks flushed. I pushed her legs back and waited.

  “I want it,” she said.

  I entered her. She moaned, her eyes closing. I began to move gently, trying to read what was most pleasurable for her.

  Watching her face twist in pleasure was proof that I had made the right decision. I was doing this to Ilsa. We slowly began to move faster. Her eyes opened, staring at the ceiling blankly, and she reached out blindly for me. I took her fingers in mine as I pushed her to new heights of pleasure, her moans filling the room.

  Pleasure built up within me but Ilsa was already approaching her own climax. I held her close and kissed her. Her breasts rubbed against my chest with every thrust. Her moans rumbled down my throat.

  Her legs clasped around my waist as she hit her peak. She stared at me with wide-open eyes and moaned soundlessly.

  I continued moving, the waves of her desire pushing me closer to my limit. I kissed her again as I finished.

  We held each other for a little while. Then Ilsa smirked as she felt something poking into her.

  “Why am I not surprised?” she said, nibbling on my ear. “You’re on the brew, right?”

  I gave her a condescending look and she laughed. The sound echoed in my ear.

  “I guess there’s no risk if we keep going all night, then,” she said. Then she rolled on top of me.

  It was a very long, very enjoyable
night.

  Chapter 15

  The town of Garpha was a quiet enough place to make me think there wasn’t a war being waged. I could hear the bustle of the market a street away. Farmers haggled over supplies and tools for the season. A pair of agriwizards yelled over each other in a turf dispute that no doubt had some village chiefs rubbing their hands in glee. Bored soldiers leaned against the walls nearby, idly watching the children underfoot in case of any mischief.

  One of those soldiers had a horn sticking out of his forehead, the townspeople eying him and keeping their distance, but otherwise, there was little issue with my uniformed peacekeepers.

  I was taking in the sights and sounds of my newly occupied territory to the south. We were weeks away from a siege of Talepolis. Weeks away from being able to begin our preparations to take the fight to Lyria. Everything seemed to be going well. Things hadn’t been bloodless, but they had been close enough to keep the populace happy and the markets humming.

  A supply train, heavily laden with food, wood, and other supplies for the coming assault, disappeared beyond the fields around the town. My black and blue flag flapped in the air above it, a company of bored soldiers keeping rhythm alongside the carts. I suspected they would make camp at the next village they hit, not far down the road. This was the heartland of the Empire’s crop production and was so thick with villages and people I could scarcely hurl a boulder from a catapult without wrecking some poor bastard’s farmland.

  “On the few nights I dared dream of walking beyond the Bulwark, I never quite pictured it like this,” Miyasa said, standing next to me. Her long white hair was fluttering in the late afternoon wind. In a few hours, it would be picturesque, with the setting sun behind her and her bright red eyes looking into mine.