Chapter 53: Side Story: The Arch-Mage

When was it that I first noticed? Walking past the catacombs' entrance, as I had hundreds of times before, the chilling breeze blowing from below led me to ask the question I had never before thought to ask: What idiot thought it was a good idea to build 'doors' that didn't close?

Dru'niryeal didn't know; the building predated all of us, and no-one had preserved the knowledge. Then another question. Why hadn't we considered replacing them?

Dru'niryeal hadn't ever thought of that, either. After giving it some consideration, she didn't see the point. The Goddess' barrier was better protection than any gate, and trying to retrofit one now would be too disruptive. She... wasn't wrong, but I felt like there should be better justification for not further fortifying our settlement against the most devastating and contagious disease in existence than not wanting to make a mess.

And that led me to ponder the undead blight itself. What the heck sort of nonsense disease was it? It killed its host, then reanimated them as a mindless, flesh-eating zombie? That made no sense! There's no way something like that wasn't artificial. It would be beyond my skill, but I could see the path that one could take to recreate it, given enough time and talent. But why would someone do such a thing?

The earliest mention of the blight in our history was the last king, who supposedly turned to it for the sake of immortality. But it utterly defies belief that he created it for that purpose. Its effects are not accidental. It must have been very carefully designed to do what it does, and could not possibly be the result of a failure in trying to design a magical solution to extend one's lifespan. Yet if it existed prior to that king, why was it not mentioned in our history books?

Perhaps he succeeded in making himself immortal, and the Goddess twisted it into the blight as punishment for defying her will? Heh, I could easily imagine the look on Dru'niryeal's face if I theorised at her that the blight was created by the Goddess. It was a look I would prefer not to see in reality.

Regardless, my musings were just that; musings. They didn't change anything, and I couldn't go back into the past to seek answers. I put my thoughts to the back of my mind and got on with life.

A few days later, a monster wave attacked our town. It was easily repelled, as always; with the cleared plant life giving us advance warning of approaching monsters, we could devastate their numbers with long range attacks before they even got close. Those that did successfully approach couldn't penetrate the Goddess' barrier, and soon fell themselves. I stood on the walls, aiding in the defence not so much because I was needed, but in case any monsters were powerful enough to have developed cores.

None were, but as I looked over the field, another thought occurred to me. Where had all these monsters come from? The cavern we live in is large, but not so much so that a horde of this size could build up without being noticed, given their normal speed of reproduction. I asked Sru'taklin, but he was even less helpful than Mru'walyn had been. Not only did he not know, but he didn't care. As long as they kept attacking, providing us with food and materials, where they came from wasn't important.

Unlike the blight, which I could see a path towards creating given time and talent, I could see no path towards creating a monster. Again, the only theory I could come up with was that they were the creation of the Goddess. But the temple dogma was that the Goddess despised monsters, that they were soulless beasts and were to be afforded no rights regardless of intelligence or actions. Why would she create something she despised? Was temple dogma not the full story? Was there an opposing divine force?

This world made no sense, and this time I decided to get to the bottom of it. Or the top, perhaps. Books in our library told of a place called the surface, where if you went high enough up, eventually the rock would run out, and there would be nothing more above your head than air. There were fairytales of new types of monsters and, more importantly, unknown civilised races. Perhaps they would have history of their own.

I travelled outside our settlement for the first time in years, making my way to the upper caverns. If the surface was up, that would be a good starting point. The upper caverns were neglected and unmaintained, and a group of aranea volito had settled in around the Goddess' statue. A few fell to my magic, and the remaining monsters were intelligent enough to stay out of my way.

There was another passage leading away from the Goddess' shrine, further upwards, so I followed it, wondering all the while why we had no records of anyone searching for the surface. Why had my predecessors not come this way? Why had I not come this way? Why was it only the past few days that I'd started asking such obvious questions? That in itself was a question far stranger than any musing about the nature of the blight.

The passage ended at a wall. It looked natural enough, but the way it sat completely perpendicular to the passage, just as the passage had started to widen, was suspicious. Had someone deliberately blocked off passage to the surface? Hopefully, the blockage was narrow enough for me to teleport through. I reached out with my senses, using magic to probe behind the wall.

There was nothing there.

Nothing. I wasn't blocked, nor did I pick up endless rock. My spatial magic failed because there was no space to detect. Beyond that wall, the universe ended. There was no such thing as the surface. There wasn't even an infinite layer of rock. I attempted to tunnel through, to view the edge of creation with my eyes instead of my magic, but the wall was impervious to all I could throw at it.

Over the next couple of days, I explored our cavern more methodically, and discovered the true nature of our universe. A cylinder, little more than fifteen kilometres in diameter, the top not far beyond the roof of our own cavern and the bottom out of my detection range, below the catacombs, heading down towards the abyss.

How had no-one noticed this before!!!

It was completely implausible to me that none of my predecessors had noticed that the entire universe was so small that you could walk from one side to the other in a few hours. It was completely implausible to me that I hadn't noticed. What explanations could there be?

Mind magic? I checked myself out, and found no signs of external manipulation of my mind, or any traces of it ever having been manipulated. Soul magic? The implications of that would be truly disturbing. If I caught any mage in my caste using soul magic, their remaining life would be both painful and short, but... I needed to know. I let myself into the restricted section of the library and searched through our forbidden texts.

It didn't take me long to progress far enough to learn that I had no soul. Nor did any other individual in our settlement. We were monsters. By our own temple dogma, we were not people.

I felt sick. I spent a whole day locked in my private chambers, regretting ever touching soul magic. Why had I sought answers? Why had I not been content to remain in ignorance?

My behaviour obviously alarmed my caste, not to mention my family, but what was I supposed to tell them? I conducted more experiments, dragging myself further over the edge, staring into the abyss. I discovered the reason I had never asked the questions before; there hadn't been a before. Just like the way the universe cut off not far above our heads, time cut off barely a week into the past. I hadn't asked the question because I didn't exist. My memories were all fake. The whole damn world was fake!

A group broke into my chambers, smashing down the door. Some of the higher ranked mages in my caste, and with them my nephew, So'layn. I had no children of my own; I'd always been too busy with my research to take time out for romance. Or rather, hah, I hadn't. That was just my fake memories again.

They wanted to know what was wrong, so I told them. Mo'teckit punched me in the face.

"So what?" he yelled. "What has changed? Why does the size of the universe matter? Why does it matter if the Goddess made us aeons ago or ten seconds ago? This brooding doesn't suit you. Now get out there and get back to your work before I kick you out!"

I laughed. Not just for the first time since my discovery, but for the first time ever. All my previous memories of laughter were fake, after all, and I rather found I enjoyed it. He was right. Mostly. The lack of a soul had implications that I still didn't want to dwell on, but sitting here brooding wouldn't help anyone. Alas, not all of the group were so sanguine; So'layn didn't take my news well. The implications of our lack of soul implied that we were not, as the temple claimed, people, but merely monsters ourselves. Nobody liked the idea of the afterlife preached by the temple being some sort of lie, or, at best, not for us, but as Mo'teckit had so ineloquently stated, what could we do?

I had to admit the deception was well done. Through subtle questioning of others, I found no inconsistencies in our memories. If I remembered dining with someone on a particular date, their memories matched. There was no discrepancy in our history. If not for the little ways in which the world seemed to make no sense, I'd never have noticed.

Then why? Why was the world created in this way? For what reason did we need to fear the blight? Were we toys in the eyes of the Goddess, to be played with and discarded once she grew bored?

The why was a question I couldn't answer, at least until another clue dropped into our settlement from above. A messenger arrived from So'layn, carrying a sealed, hastily scribbled note. The text was simple enough.

'Found someone claiming to be from the surface, granted immortality by the Goddess. Priestess confirmed. Taking to temple now. Put that forbidden soul magic of yours to a better use and help me steal her immortality. I'll get her prepared.'

My heart lurched. Putting So'layn's newfound fear of his mortality and resulting blasphemy aside, finding someone from the surface, something that doesn't exist in this world, so soon after our world's creation suggested her involvement. I needed to see her and find out what she knew. She was headed to the temple? How long ago was that? I rushed over, hoping to make it in time for any discussions.

What I found was a mess. Sru'taklin and Dru'niryeal were locked in combat, inside the temple. Dru'niryeal was screaming something about them kidnapping the servant of the Goddess. Damn that So'layn! What had he done?! If this world was literally made for this servant that Dru'niryeal was screaming about, then things were not likely to end well for any who attacked her. Indeed, the only reason Sru'taklin hadn't overpowered Dru'niryeal was because the barrier was acting against him. He'd been recognised as an enemy of the Goddess!

I managed to interfere in the fight, just as Jru'belem and Kru'tapet arrived. As much as I wanted to blast Sru'taklin into paste, I didn't know what So'layn had said to set him off. My ire would be better reserved for him. For now, the first priority was to find this servant of the Goddess.

I demanded an end to the fighting and an inquisition into the servant. Jru'belem and Kru'tapet backed me up, leaving the combatants no choice but to fall into line. Sru'taklin grouchily led us to an interrogation chamber deep in the guards' headquarters, then started ranting again about how the monster within could corrupt barriers and fool the priestess's truth sense. The utter moron... What lies had So'layn fed him? And how the hell had he believed them?

"He's going to kill me for biting off Si'janrii's penis!" yelled a female voice from inside the room, and Dru'niryeal blew the door from its hinges as she rushed in.

So much for immortality. The girl strapped to the chair, covered in blood, was blatantly dead. Dru'niryeal detonated. Everyone else in the room died before I even had a chance to move, So'layn included, robbing me of the chance to question the idiot. Dammit! Did that woman not know restraint?

Dru'niryeal was glaring at the corpses with an intensity that suggested she was trying to will them back to life just so that she could slaughter them again. "Which one was Si'janrii?" she asked through gritted teeth.

"The fuck are you doing?!" exclaimed Sru'taklin, finally reacting to the massacre. "We defend you from that monster, that you let mess with our barrier, and you repay me by killing my men?!"

"You dare call a blessed servant of the Goddess a monster?!"

This time, I let Jru'belem and Kru'tapet handle the lovebirds while I took the opportunity to investigate the corpse. The first thing I noticed was that she wasn't wearing a pet collar, despite the claims of Dru'niryeal. Sru'taklin hadn't denied those claims. Had someone removed it? Why would they?

Second was that there was a lot of blood given the wounds she had. Yes, there were wounds, and I didn't need to be able to see the fresh blood on a few of the tools nearby to know they had been torturing her, but nothing looked fatal. She was clearly a different species to us, so maybe she was more fragile? Or had So'layn killed her by some other method? There was so little time between her cry and her death that I couldn't deduce what had happened, but from my cursory glance, I saw no obvious cause of death.

Alas, my trust in my fellow caste leaders had been misplaced, and in the time it took me to investigate the corpse, Sru'taklin and Dru'niryeal's spat had devolved to an all-out fight. A battle raged for hours, growing far beyond my ability to contain, so I focused on evacuating bystanders and directing the worst of it outside the city.

By the end, Dru'niryeal was dead and Sru'taklin had fled. Our barrier was destroyed. The next monster wave would doubtless cause further casualties as a result. Had So'layn not already been dead, I would have killed him myself for causing this. But the mystery of the servant of the Goddess remained.

Together with Jru'belem and Kru'tapet, we called together the witnesses. The servant was a female, of a species called human. She held the name of Katie. She had approached the town once before, and, most importantly, both that time and this she had approached peacefully. On neither occasion had she been the one to open hostilities.

Most wanted to believe that the priestesses were mistaken. That Dru'niryeal was mistaken. That the girl had the ability to fool their truthsense and interfere with the Goddess' barriers. Perhaps I would have found that the more plausible option myself, if not for the timing of her arrival. I had to assume everything the priestesses reported was truth.

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Thus, Katie was still alive.

The Goddess had gifted her with the ability to defy death itself. Death was temporary, and her physical body disposable.

Since her physical body was so unimportant to her, did she possess the ability to abandon it? On her first visit, she had killed herself by slicing her throat. On her second, even after a more thorough autopsy, no cause of death was apparent. Had she simply chosen to flee, leaving her body behind? Then why slit her throat the first time? Why submit to their torture? Was there some limitation to her ability? Perhaps some preparation was required? Regardless of the specifics, if she had willingly left her body, there was a follow-on conclusion.

She'd deliberately lied, declaring So'layn her murderer. She set off Dru'niryeal. She started the fight between her supporters and detractors.

After her treatment here, it was no surprise that she would view us with hostility, despite her initial placidity. Bearing the hostility of the Goddess' chosen, the single most important individual in this world, was not a position we wanted to be in. She was dangerous.

As for her purpose in this world, she had told the priestesses that she was her to retrieve an artifact of the Goddess. A holy sword, a divine weapon capable of slaying demons, who were invading the surface world. The surface which I'd already proven didn't exist.

The logical conclusion was that our small world was a trial. A test for the Goddess' chosen. We existed as nothing more than a hurdle for her to overcome. That was unacceptable. I knew these people. I'd fought monster waves alongside them. They came to me when I'd shut myself away. None of that was fake. It all happened after the world's creation.

Our world was created when she entered. What would happen once she completed the quest and left?

We were fake existences. Without her, this nonsensical world would have no purpose. It would no longer be needed. Surely it would be erased with the same ease as it had been created. I couldn't let that happen.

Immortality was no guarantee of success on her quest. I could entrap her and send her off into an eternal sleep, but wouldn't that condemn a surface civilization to destruction at the claws of demons? I couldn't trade my people for hers. Reconciliation was required. I needed to talk to Katie. Ask her to intercede with the Goddess on our behalf.

When I heard that she had walked straight into our town, side by side with one who previously sought to enslave her, hope bloomed. If she was prepared to forgive, reconciliation would be possible. I grabbed one of my lesser subordinates, one who had encountered her before and claimed to be on good terms, and together we followed her to the temple. When I saw the building lit up with mana, the shrine repaired and barriers restored, the hope blossomed further. However, she refused to talk, descending into the catacombs despite the pleas of my subordinate.

She continued to be slippery. As well as the subspace storage ability she had demonstrated, she also revealed an ability to teleport. She must be a skilled spatial mage. While her teleportation ability appeared limited compared to my own, the storage ability was intriguing. The cleanliness with which witnesses described its use, without any signs of spatial distortion or portal creation, exceeded anything I knew how to do. I found myself wanting to talk with her for reasons other than our existential crisis, as a fellow mage.

She refused to willingly enter discussions, leaving me torn. Should we force the issue, or would that make things worse? The other two town leaders knew nothing about the nature of our world that I had discovered, and I was hesitant to inform them. Jru'belem wanted to leave her alone, on condition she never left the temple, and used it only for transit to the catacombs. Kru'tapet voted to utilise any means to capture her, despite knowing nothing of the threat she posed.

Unwilling to risk her completing her quest while still ignoring us, I sided with Kru'tapet, with the compromise that no violence was to be employed. We knew her teleportation abilities only allowed her to teleport to shrines, so I had my mages set up a barrier around both, and armed them with potent sleeping gas.

Jru'belem and Kru'tapet wanted a trial. I saw no point, but they felt it would calm down the populace, and stem the flow of rumours that were circulating. People liked to pick and choose their facts, and too many believed her to be behind the earlier fighting, without believing what led up to it. If they wanted to hold a staged trial for the benefit of spectators, I saw no reason to stop it, but to me, I was only interested in what would come after. I was prepared to drop to my knees and beg if I had to, but I needed to save my people without sacrificing hers.

My decision was wrong. The sleeping gas proved ineffective, her resistance to it far higher than that of any vulpes, and in her attempts to escape, she employed the blight. Blight! Of all the things she could have done, she chose that. It spread through our town like a flood. I watched helplessly as man, woman and child rotted before my eyes. The high priestesses did their best to save who they could, but it was only a drop in the ocean.

I evacuated the clean and the cured, and then burnt the city. I, who had been so determined to save my people, was forced to slaughter them. I stood and listened to the screeches of the already-dead, as well as the screaming of the dying. Those who hadn't yet succumbed, but who we had no means to cure.

Yes, I had made an incorrect decision, but it was not the one I thought. My mistake had been to seek reconciliation. If I wanted to protect the remnants of my people, half-heartedness wouldn't suffice. I should never have valued a people I'd never met and knew nothing of alongside my own kind; it was us or her. As Katie was the only individual in this world with a soul, I was uniquely placed to deal with her. I could attack her in a way that swapping out her physical body couldn't fix. I could attack her soul.

A soul couldn't be destroyed. Even if it could, would that be any different from her completing the quest and leaving? She needed to be protected, but I needed to permanently ensure her quest was never completed. I would destroy her memory. Take away all knowledge of her quest, not even leaving a hint behind of the surface or other worlds. The result would be a blank slate. I would raise her as a daughter of my own. Teach her to use her abilities for our people and raise her into an immortal protector for us.

My decision came too late. She had found a new shrine in the catacombs, and no longer needed to pass through our area. I considered my options as I tried to get the survivors of the blight stabilised, and stop its continued spread around our cavern. Going down there on my own would require very careful preparations, and even then, I couldn't protect myself from the blight for long enough to conduct any sort of search. I started producing potions that would provide temporary protection, but truthfully, I knew I'd already lost. If she never came back up here, or didn't remain close to the entrance, I would almost certainly never find her. She had successfully made her escape.

Why did Dru'niryeal have to die? If she were here, perhaps Katie could have been guided away from hostility. If she were here, the blight could have been purged from our town. If she were here, searching the catacombs would be trivial. The lesser priestesses could protect a group, but not for long. It would still be insufficient to conduct a search. I could do little but wait for the end to come, the only comfort being that I would be unlikely to notice when it did. Blinking out of existence wouldn't leave much of a chance for pain, after all.

This time, fortune turned in my favour. Katie reappeared in our cavern, tripping a circle of detection runes I'd left around the scorched remains of our former town. I couldn't resist the urge to speak to her, to see what she thought of our people. She showed not a shred of guilt for the deaths she had caused, and my last doubts about my course of action evaporated. I sent her to sleep and teleported her back to my chambers. My cave. Damn her. But it was over now. I had her, and she would remain asleep while I prepared to reset her soul.

She died. She didn't wake up; I was certain of that. She simply died in her sleep, for no apparent reason. No apparent biological reason. I was in the middle of carefully crafting soul magic, so I saw the truth. Her soul was plucked cleanly from her body while she slept.

The time between when I'd first started speaking to her and her death had been almost exactly one hour. That matched her death at the hands of So'layn, too. Hadn't her death come about an hour after the attack on the temple? And the instance of the blight. An hour between her capture at the upper shrine and her death in the Halls of Truth. That was the limitation. Why she had slit her throat on her first visit. Why she had submitted to So'layn's torture.

The only question that remained was whether it was automatic. Was incapacitation enough to start the countdown, or did it require conscious action on her part? If so, a surprise sleep spell could capture her. But could I be absolutely certain that she wouldn't have time to trigger it before the spell took effect? I couldn't. The better alternative was to prepare beforehand, so that I could do what needed to be done within the hour window.

I may not have finished in time during her last capture, but the preparations I'd made would be useful. With the measurements of her mana and her soul, searching would no longer be required; I could build detectors. I could imbue the memory wiping spell into a weapon. I dispatched a team to the catacombs, entrusting the enchanted dagger to one of my senior mages. One who knew the truth and would not be afraid to do what must be done.

He failed. The group came back without him, Sru'taklin having killed him in defence of Katie. The same Sru'taklin that had murdered Dru'niryeal to protect our settlement from an insidious monster that had corrupted the priestesses and the shrines. Having witnessed irrefutable proof that Katie was the Goddess' chosen, and that I had attempted to use soul magic against her, he had switched sides.

So be it. I wanted to keep the knowledge to those who already had it, but I was forced to explain myself. The fact that we were monsters. Toys of the Goddess. Nothing more than an obstacle for Katie to overcome. That once she completed her quest, our usefulness would be at an end.

We lost three more people that night. There was no violence. One was found in a shaft deep in the mine, with a noose around his neck. One stepped outside to think, and never came back. The third simply disappeared without a trace.

Those who were left agreed that my course of action was correct. Even the priestesses. They simply didn't believe that I would succeed. "If our role was to be an obstacle, then an obstacle we should be," declared Do'myrith.

Able to act more openly, and having confirmed the catacombs' shrine repelled the blight, I had trusted mages stand guard at each statue. The moment she teleported in or resurrected, I would have her. Yet still she remained slippery. A mage caught her but lost his life in the process. She escaped me by suicide, despite complete paralysis of her limbs. She could use her subspace storage without any vocalisations or motions. That was beyond expectations, but I could compensate.

An hour later, the mage stationed upstairs activated his enchanted dagger, but Katie didn't appear. Had she escaped somehow? Had she gained resistance to teleportation? I teleported upstairs myself.

Blight!

As if more evidence was needed for her lack of remorse, she had once again wielded blight as a weapon. Thankfully, I had reached the suffering mage in time. With the aid of a high priestess, we were able to purify him.

Meanwhile, Katie restored the town's barrier for the second time. What a joke. An area of scorched earth, with better protection than our caves. I returned to the cave that was my new home. Were the priestesses correct? Had I been made to lose? To present a challenge, but to fail no matter how hard I tried? Was protecting my people impossible? Another rune triggered, indicating the death of the mage stationed in the catacombs. It was all useless. If only So'layn hadn't tried to capture her...

As I sat stewing in regret, I felt a dagger activate. Who? There were no mages left guarding the shrines. Had someone finally caught her?

A blighted monster appeared in my room, emitting an aura of such virulence that my skin dried and cracked instantly. I couldn't help but laugh. She'd used my own dagger against me, trying to kill off the last of us with the blight. I let the fire burst from me, incinerating the monster along with the contents of my room. A crown dropped to the floor, undamaged despite the heat that had turned all other metal in the room to glowing liquid.

I looked at the crown and saw it for what it was. All I needed to do was wear it, and the blight would be mine to control. I could turn the catacombs against Katie. Direct the blight away from our cavern. All it would cost was my soul, and I didn't have one of them to start with.

No. I would never become that. It was my own enchanted dagger she had used. I could follow the path of the spatial magic with ease. I prepared the soul magic, teleported to the dagger's previous location, and beheld Katie in front of me. She'd changed her armour, and her hair had turned white, but it was her. Prone, face-down, struggling to move on the floor, presumably injured in her fight against the blighted monster. I struck her with the full force of my spell, and she didn't even try to dodge. It was over. I'd won.

"Was that supposed to do something?" she said, still prone on the floor. "I didn't feel anything?"

What?

My barrier activated, a single use shield that I wore at all times, just in case. I spun around to see another Katie behind me, in the process of taking a sword from her subspace storage. I blocked the blow, only for the room to suddenly tilt.

No, it wasn't the room. When my own lower body came into sight of my rotating vision, the extent of my failure became apparent.

The second Katie thrust her sword towards me, but there was nothing I could do. I'd lost. Oblivion would take me, Katie would succeed in her quest, and the fleeting existence of the vulpes sagax would soon be over.

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