TheBookofEndsEndFightingDogs - The Lich King Reincarnates As A Baby: Book 4 Chapter 18.5: Territory and Limits

Book 4 Chapter 18.5: Territory and Limits

++The rivalry between Garamon’s nobility and magicians has recently been joined by a third party, the dark horse that is businessmen. Just as the magicians once made their wealth through propelling sail ships with conjured winds, so too do those of means make more now with the distribution of steam power.++

-  From ‘Magic and Mundanity’, a commentary on the role of the arcane in an advancing society.

 Dave Blakely was always fast in getting prepared and readying himself to leave, at least. I was aware that this trait quite likely stemmed from the fact that he generally just lived his life under the assumption that he would imminently need to flee from danger wherever he went, but all the same I appreciated it now. I was in no mood to wait.

Victoria managed to make the ten or so minutes he took feel like an hour, all the same.

“Can we meet that lady you told me about?” she asked me.

“Who?”

“The one who’s always talking about…you know.”

Sethira. She meant Sethira.

“Absolutely not,” I snapped.

Victoria grinned. “Are you embarrassed?”

“No, I just do not want you to be exposed to her.” Sethira would see Victoria as a weak spot in me and take every opportunity to irritate me through her. Quite apart from that, I most certainly did not want my young and impressionable younger sister to be influenced by her.

But now that younger sister was smiling like she knew something I did not.

“What is so funny?” I demanded.

“Nothing.”

“Tell me.”

“Why don’t you figure it out?” Victoria said in an awful impression of my own voice. “Your mind is a weapon, it must be sharpened and honed. Ooh I’m Isabel and I know everything and can do whatever I want. Here’s a thousand crowns just for existing Victoria, but no pony.”

She was being ridiculously childish, and it should not have gotten to me. It did, a little. But it mostly just reassured me. Victoria was annoying by nature, that she was annoying me now showed she was at least shifting back to her normal self. I could only hope that it lasted. 

Blakely did not keep us waiting for much longer, and I did not wait to skim along Poloira’s sands before taking to the air. Practice and some mental theory-crafting had let me finally perfect a sled that could simply arc up into the skies without the need for a long runway, and even with two passengers it dragged us along quickly.

As always, Blakely did not like flying. I did not bother enclosing this vehicle for speech, so I could not actually hear his complaints, but each time I looked back I saw his lips moving in a drowned-out mumble, when his face was not spasming too violently for speech like that to occur. Victoria clung to me and pointedly gave the man a wide berth, a course of action that I rather approved of, even if I knew now that Blakely was actually not particularly dangerous.

Lachfel was barely in sight before we were touching down outside the Vornholt estate, and Blakely was the first off. He stumbled away from the vehicle, dropped down to his knees and started shaking. I ignored the man while Victoria awkwardly climbed off herself. My sister suddenly looked to be in something of a worse mood.

“I’m sorry,” she said to me as we headed inside. “I…I was just too scared to stay with you.”

I eyed my sister, unsure what she was getting at. “What are you apologizing for?”

“I couldn’t hack it,” Victoria scowled with her eyes on the ground. “You and Agrian got kidnapped when you were younger than me, but the way I heard it you were as calm as anything.”

“That is not a very useful comparison,” I pointed out. “I was too young to really feel fear at that point, while Agrian was reduced to a nervous wreck for weeks afterwards. You are recovering far faster than him despite being more aware than me.”

In truth, of course, my own kidnapping had gone a little bit differently than that, but given that the world had yet to work out I was fully cognisant and responsible for the disaster it had devolved into, I saw no reason to illuminate anyone. 

My words did not seem to mollify Victoria much as she trudged along after me. 

“I want to be strong, like you,” she told me. “But I’m not.”

“Then become strong,” I shrugged. Victoria frowned. Clearly, my sister had been hoping for a different sort of response. I elaborated for her. “You are a human, you have the ability to change yourself. If you want to be different, become different. There is nothing to gain by whining about things fully under your control. Except, I suppose, for excuses and comfort. That is all I can tell you on the topic.”

Victoria scowled at me.

“You’re really bad at being a reassuring older sister.”

“Then you will have to make do with an honest one instead,” I shrugged. “There is nothing inherently special about me, Victoria. There is no magical force that has selected me for success and greatness. I will go far simply because I am willing to look at what I must do, and then do it. You talk about my magical talent, my bravery, my intelligence—”

“I haven’t talked about your intelligence—”

“My cunning, my beauty, my charisma—”

“I haven’t talked about your charisma.”

“My amazing breasts—”

“I definitely haven’t talked about those,” she frowned, looking faintly disgusted.

“Stop interrupting,” I snapped. “My point is that I have many great qualities that set me apart from others, and you seem to be letting them all distract you from the fact that I got where I am by simply being willing to do the things others do not expect me to. Weakness and cowardice are learned. So is strength. If you want to discard the former and acquire the latter then make the choice to do so.”

My sister thought about that as we went, which was all I could have hoped for. She was a clever and powerful girl with the tools to go very far indeed if she wished. 

The only question, really, was whether or not she wished.

Our discussion was interrupted by a certain blonde projectile named Elizabeth Vornholt storming out to meet us in the reception hall. My mother looked furious. She had not precisely aged rapidly as much as simply become more streamlined, like all the soft edges had been sharpened to make a more ergonomic vessel for her new anger. She made a beeline for Victoria and wrapped her arms around the girl, while I stepped back and watched as my sister squirmed.

“Thank the Gods you’re okay,” my mother almost wept while Victoria struggled against her. She was not quite as tall as our mother just yet, and lacked the seemingly feral strength that left the grip so unbreakable.

“I’m fine,” Victoria scowled. “Nothing happened.”

“You were almost kidnapped!” our mother snapped, releasing her at last and straightening up as she shot a glance at me. I was surprised to find there was bitterness there.

“I got her back,” I volunteered. 

“Yes, you did,” my mother said stiffly. “Victoria, retire to your room for now. I must speak with Isabel privately.”

Victoria clearly knew that there was a deeper conversation about to be had here, and it was clear she did not want to miss it at all. One more look from our mother, however, seemed to persuade her that there were more intense experiences awaiting her here than an interesting piece of gossip. Dismemberment, perhaps. She scurried away and left me alone with the Baroness.

And she did not wait long to speak her mind after that.

“I heard about the kidnapping,” she said abruptly. “Care to explain that?”

I took a moment to realise she was implying that I, somehow, had played a part in it. 

“You cannot believe that was my fault,” I frowned. “Victoria was attacked while I was away.”

“All I know is that danger seems to follow wherever you go,” she snapped. “And I was not given any details about the situation. You want me to believe that it’s all just coincidence that you, of all my children, keep being around such disasters?”

I wanted to say yes, but had to admit that I had been…maximizing the odds a lot. 

Even still, this certainly was not my fault. “It was an unprovoked attack, the kidnappers specifically waited until Victoria was separated from me to try it, and even then she ended up being rescued only because I was there to aid her afterwards. You are being ridiculous.”

She bristled at that. “Don’t talk to me like that,” my mother snapped. 

I started to lose my temper. “You have been nothing but contemptuous to me, and for no reason at all,” I said evenly. “I will talk to you however I like.” 

She seemed intent to draw my ire, so I saw no reason not to provide it. 

My mother’s response was interrupted, however, when Victoria emerged from behind the corner, scowling at her. “Isabel didn’t do anything,” the girl yelled. “Leave her alone.”

Both I and my mother paused a moment, just to stare at Victoria, surprised that she was still here and realising all at once that she must not have gone to her room at all.

Our reactions to this fact were quite different.

I was proud, of course. 

“Victoria!” my mother yelled, growing angrier by the moment. “You will leave this instant.”

Before I could chime in with my own view, Victoria was already responding by taking another step forwards. “No, I’m not going to let you put all of this on Isabel. She saved me. You were nowhere to be seen. You never do anything. Isabel brings home millions, all you’re capable of is complaining.”

My mother looked more hurt than I had ever seen her, though I found the sight remarkably funny. There was some idle dreg of sympathy in me for the Baroness, but it was feeble and easily ignored. As far as I was concerned, this was an entirely deserved dressing-down. Demanded, even, by such a brazen show of weakness.

But Elizabeth Vornholt was used to such displays by now, and she did not remain silent for long.

“Very well then, Victoria. Since you’re insisting on staying here you may as well find out now; thanks to this latest incident, I have decided to have you moved to a boarding school, where you can learn a more proper way of behaving than Isabel has apparently been teaching you.”

“No!” Victoria yelled. “Why!?”

I did step in then. “That is ridiculous,” I frowned. “You cannot—”

“I can,” my mother snapped. “I am her mother Isabel, me. Not you. You do not control this family, you do not decide what becomes of its children, of my children!” There was a touch of hysteria to her voice, the pitch of someone standing on the edge of a precipice and realising now how long the fall was.

But she was not backing down. 

“I want to go to Winzorth,” Victoria said abruptly. “Isabel and Agrian did, I want to as well. I’m already older than Isabel was when she started, let me go there.”

“No child of mine is going to attend that wretched place ever again,” our mother snapped. “That’s where this all started, where Isabel learned all her sick perversions.”

“Perversions like thinking and achieving things instead of sitting around growing old and stupid,” I said with all the cruelty I could manage. My mother made a deep hissing sound, like a burnt animal, and actually took a step towards me.

I took a step forward, too. She did not know about my new body’s inhuman strength—did not know that, after my months spent training it, I could already lift well over twice my weight—but even still she flinched. 

Elizabeth Vornholt was a tall woman, but she stood four inches shorter than me and our new proximity made the size difference apparent.

“Victoria will go where she wants to,” I told my mother.

She did not, despite the obvious fear, back down. “She’s my daughter,” she growled. “She’ll go where I send her.”

A thousand retorts passed through my mind. I did not voice any of them.

My mother was magically inept, had all the physical strength of a middle-age woman and had likely never thrown a punch in her life. She was poorer than me, less connected socially, and lacked that one critical quality that all truly significant people possess: the willingness to act. 

But she was Victoria’s parent, and I was not. And I could see that there was no hint of surrender in her eyes now. I sent a glance my sister’s way and felt my fury redouble at the hope in her eyes before I turned and started to walk out of the mansion. 

The more powerful I became, it seemed, the more glaring my limits.