Keiran

Interrogating all my new prisoners was a waste of time. Other than sorting out the ones who were there voluntarily from the ones who’d been coerced into it, I learned absolutely nothing of any value. For the six I didn’t kill once I was done with them, I sent them to the same place I’d banished Laphlin to.

The two powerhouse mages who’d survived, the barrier mage and the smart one who’d fled, probably knew lots of useful information, but getting it out of them was a different matter. Both were master mages, and a mage specializing in defensive spells was a difficult nut to crack. The brakvaw had caught the runner for me, but I’d delayed picking him up until I finished with the group I already had, which meant finding a way to secure this guy before I did anything else.

With everyone else dealt with, I turned to face the reinforced block of ice I’d trapped the man in. It was riddled with cracks, held in place only by my own force magic. The mage had dispelled the ice six times now, only to trigger a trap ward that recast it each time. Fortunately, he hadn’t been able to sort through the trap’s weave to drain it.

There was a reason it was dangerous to overspecialize. He might have archmage-level defenses, but he was barely competent at everything else. It worked out well for me, however, in that he was still trapped and ready to be interrogated.

“Let’s start with something simple,” I said, knowing he could hear me through the ice. I didn’t bother to dispel it, not when keeping himself from freezing was a distraction to his own spellcasting and a constant drain on his mana. “How about you tell me your name?”

Unfortunately, my mind reading spells weren’t getting through his own mental defenses. At best, I could barely pick up thoughts he was actively directing at me, and he knew it. I got back a string of curses from him and nothing else. Trying to press deeper resulted in being blocked completely as he flexed his countermeasures to push me back.

“I think we’ve firmly established that I’m not getting any information out of your brain by force,” I told him. “Which means there are really only two options left here: either we come to some sort of agreement that we can both walk away from, or I just cut my losses and kill you. So let’s try again. What’s your name?”

‘Hebrem,’ he thought. Somehow even his thought managed to convey the idea that he sneered at me while he said it.

“There we go. Progress. So, Hebrem, let’s talk about what you want. Am I right in assuming you’re not some sort of religious zealot interested in dying for the cause? I mean, you specialize in defensive magic, which clearly shows a strong interest in self-preservation to me.”

‘You’re going to kill me anyway. Why should I help you first?’

“There’s not really much reason to. You’re not a threat to me,” I said. “You could be useful if you know something about Ammun’s plans that I don’t, and I’m perfectly happy to trade your life for that information.”

There was nowhere I could dump Hebrem that he couldn’t escape from. Barely competent he might be, that was still enough for him to fly out of any local village or town. More importantly, Ammun’s hunters had figured out where my demesne was, which meant this was only the first attack unless I did something to stop them.

‘The lich will crush you like a bug the next time the two of you face off. We saw your last battle. You barely scraped a victory, and that was against an opponent with almost no mana who’d just come out of a thousand-year hibernation. Betraying him to you seems like a bad idea.’

“Sure, I get where you’d think that. It makes sense from your point of view. Counter argument: he’s not here. I am. Do you think Ammun is going to fly a few thousand miles to rescue you before we reach the end of this conversation?”

Hebrem didn’t answer with words, but I did get a vague sense of frustration, unease, and anger all mixed together. Either he was good at controlling his emotions or, more likely, he firmed up his mental defenses quickly, because the feeling cut out after barely a second.

‘Let me out of this ice prison first.’

“Why would I do that?” I asked. “It’s keeping you occupied, and we’re still enemies.”

‘Let me out and we can talk.’

In all fairness, being trapped in a block of ice would normally be fatal, even to a fully-trained mage. It took some fairly specific countermeasures to survive something like that, which was why Hebrem was alive and one of his other companions was not. It wasn’t a master-tier spell for no reason.

“That doesn’t sound like a good idea to me. We can talk just fine like this.”

‘I can barely hear half of what you’re saying. I’m extremely cold. It’s hard to think while maintaining this spell. And besides,’ Hebrem thought to me, ‘You’ve proven I can’t beat you. There’s no way I’m going to escape. This is just pointless torture.’

“I wouldn’t call it pointless if it’s softening you up to do what I want,” I said. The mana costs to maintain the cold around Hebrem’s icy prison weren’t negligible, but with lossless casting and us being inside my demesne, I could keep him trapped indefinitely. “But I’ll meet you halfway here. I’ll let you out of the ice, then you’ll answer some questions. Or you won’t, and I’ll kill you.”

There was no mistaking the surge of hatred coming from Hebrem there. Surprisingly, there was no fear in the man. I wasn’t sure if it was sheer arrogance making him believe he’d find a way out of his predicament or if he just truly wasn’t afraid to die, but either way, it was unusual.

Did he know something I didn’t? Was that why he wasn’t worried? Or was he actually terrified, but too good and controlling his mental shields to let it slip out? If that was the case, then every emotion I felt coming from him was calculated, though I couldn’t guess what he was trying to accomplish.

My wards were fully charged and my divinations were actively scanning the area for threats. Any attempts by anyone other than me to scry or teleport into or out of the area would be contested by my defenses, and short of Ammun himself showing up, I was confident the defenses would win.

I relaxed the spells holding Hebrem’s ice prison together. About ten seconds later, the first chunk broke free and crashed to the floor, where it scattered into a hundred tiny shards of ice. Within a few seconds of that, the rest of the prison collapsed, leaving a shivering, red-faced, wet-haired Hebrem standing there glaring at me.

“Y-y-you,” he started to say, but stopped to gain control over his chattering.

I watched, one eyebrow raised, and waited patiently for him to compose himself.

Hebrem took a minute to cast a spell to dry himself off. Perhaps he knew that I’d watch him like a hawk to ensure no other magic snuck its way into that casting, or perhaps he simply cared so much about his comfort that he couldn’t help himself. Either way, it truly was simple, basic magic that did nothing more than clean him up and dry his hair.

“You,” he said again when he was done, this time with a finger jabbed in my direction for extra emphasis, “are thoroughly insufferable.”

“You know, for a guy who could very well end up dead in the next ten seconds, you sure are bold,” I pointed out.

“You’re not going to kill me,” Hebrem said.

“Why’s that?”

“Because you attacked Ammun’s secret project, set him back on it. But you don’t know what it is, or you wouldn’t have given up after your first assault.”

“What makes you think I’ve given up?” I asked.

“There’s a whole legion of diviners focused on finding you if you go anywhere near those things,” Hebrem told me. “We know you haven’t been back to make sure the damage was thorough.”

That was true. “So what is it, then? And how far back did I set production?”

“Lord Ammun isn’t telling anyone, but he’s got a lot of us involved in crafting specific pieces to his specifications. We’ve compared notes.”

“And?” I prompted. Hebrem was starting to annoy me now.

“And if I tell you, you have to let me go.”

“No. I’ve got a hundred more questions to get through. I want to know who’s on this team that’s specifically hunting for me. I want to know what the inside of the tower looks like now that most of the inhabitants have been kicked out. What else has Ammun been up to? You’re going to tell me everything if you want to walk away from this.”

“I’d never be able to hide that I betrayed a lich lord if I gave you that much information! I’ll tell you one thing only.”

“No deal,” I said. “Do you have a preference in how you die? I’m assuming you’d prefer quick and painless.”

For all his blustering, Hebrem was right about one thing – I wasn’t actually going to kill him, not yet. One way or another, I was going to get answers to my questions. It would be better for him if he gave them voluntarily, and it would save me a lot of time having to break down his mental defenses and trawl through his mind, something I didn’t want to do anyway since there was every chance I’d miss important information.

“Damn you, negotiate with me!” Hebrem snapped. “You can’t just expect me to hand over every bit of leverage I have before we even get started.”

“Oh, I see the issue,” I said. “You’re misunderstanding what’s happening here. This isn’t a negotiation. I’m going to get what I want, freely given, or you’re going to die. You get to choose which option you’d prefer.”

“Everything is a negotiation,” he said. “That’s what makes the world function. If you don’t see that—”

“It’s because I am a very old, very dangerous, and very impatient monster,” I finished for him. “Negotiations are for people too weak to just take what they want.”

Something must have finally clicked for him, because for the first time, a sharp spike of fear surged through him. It hadn’t been some kind of act or deception, after all. The idiot truly just thought he was safe from harm for some reason. He was just now finally realizing that I wasn’t trying some sort of tactic or scam on him.

“Now, let’s start again. What exactly is Ammun building, and when will it be completed?”

“We think it’s some sort of tether,” Hebrem blurted out, his nerve failing him. “It’ll connect him to something, probably the Sanctum itself.”

“To let him draw mana from it directly, even if he’s not there,” I said.

Hebrem nodded. “Exactly! The components are extremely delicate to spatial distortions. It must be because the setup has to cross great distances.”

If Ammun completed it, he’d be able to roam anywhere inside the circle of those eight sites with full access to his mana. I could see why he’d put so much effort into something like that. He was effectively trapped in the tower right now, the massive amounts of mana he needed to keep his body from crumbling too much to allow him to travel more than an hour or two away at a time, not unless he wanted to bring his phylactery with him everywhere he went. Even then, it wouldn’t increase his radius enough to justify the risk.

That would make assaulting the tower all the more difficult if Ammun could leave to defend it, but it all felt underwhelming to me. There had to be more to it than just that.

“Tell me everything you can about the pieces you helped build,” I ordered. “I want to know exactly how these machines work.”